


clasp it in your hand (hide it in your heart)

by Siavahda



Series: Astrae [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Biting, Blood Kink, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Dark Romance, Dark Stiles, Gen, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Marking, Masochism, Morally Ambiguous Peter Hale, Morally Ambiguous Stiles Stilinski, Painplay, Post-Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Power Bottom Stiles Stilinski, Power Dynamics, Relationship Negotiation, Rough Kissing, Rough Sex, Sadism, Self-Acceptance, Sex Magic, Snarky Stiles, Spark Stiles Stilinski, Tattoos, Virginity Kink, Worldbuilding, werewolf powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-02-14 11:26:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13006785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siavahda/pseuds/Siavahda
Summary: “You have alerts set up to notify you of my financial movements,” Peter said slowly.“And your actual locational movements, your internet search history, and any and all uses of any of your four passports,” Stiles added, mock-helpfully. “Mr Hale-Delaunay-Mirren-Addams.”“Of course you do.” The werewolf paused a moment, clearly considering. “I think I’m flattered,” he decided.Stiles wants answers. Peter wants to go back to bed. Turns out, they’re not mutually exclusive desires.





	1. twinkle twinkle little star, how dark and beautiful you are—

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year, everyone! So, this is probably not the thing any of my followers was hoping I’d update next - for what it’s worth, I _have_ been working on the next chapters of Knives and also Reforged. Fingers crossed you’ll actually get to see them sometime in the next century. 
> 
> In my defense, I got my first ever job not long ago! So far it’s going well, but jumping from sick-leave-for-two-years-because-depression to part-time is apparently exhausting; I’m told I’ll get used to it soon and have the energy for writing again on my days off. I’m very much looking forward to it.
> 
> RE this: I have no defense, okay. This whole chapter was not supposed to happen this way (this series was meant to be SLOW-BUILD DAMMIT) but it did and now we get to deal with it. Oh well. I’m sure at least some of you won’t mind. 
> 
> More worldbuilding tidbits are dropped for you here, and yes, Stiles is supposed to be that moodswingy/shift between personalities like that. This is basically all smut, and I think all the warnings are covered in the tags - let me know if I missed something that needs tagging. Stiles is 17 in this series, which by my British standards makes him Of Age for sexing, but I understand the age of consent differs in different places, hence the underage warning. The fic title is meant to fit with that of part one - I have several installments planned and the titles kind of follow on from each other - but the chapter titles do not.
> 
> Thank you for all the wonderful comments left on part one. I do read every one, though I rarely have the energy to answer. I never expected so many people to enjoy my crazy fic idea! 
> 
> I hope you enjoy this one as much :)

No one knew where Peter made his den, which considerably narrowed down the number of people who could be knocking on his door at four in the morning.

Narrowed it down to one, in fact.

He contemplated remaining in bed and simply waiting for them to go away—and then considered the likelihood of finding his visitor curled up on his doormat when he went out to buy milk in the morning, if Peter didn’t answer now. The probability was irritatingly high.

The probability that this particular visitor would, upon tiring of waiting to be let in, simply pick his locks and brush through his wards as if they weren’t even there, on the other hand—was practically a guarantee.

Peter swallowed a growl, and got out of bed. He didn’t want to have this conversation—spending a full day in the meditative state required for calling to and finding the kirin had drained him more than he liked, after going so long without practice at it, and he’d been badly shaken by how close he’d come to reaching Stiles too late. He could still smell, very faintly, the scent of Stiles’ poisoned blood on his own hands; could still, without effort, feel it smearing warm and wet as tears beneath his fingertips as he’d clutched Stiles’ face. He had already known both those things would make for a difficult night’s sleep, and he didn’t need it made any harder by being forced to a confrontation he would have to navigate as carefully as a minefield.

He did not think anyone should know, yet, that it hadn’t been the kirin’s horn that cured Stiles of Noshiko’s poison.

But if he was not at his best, then at least he wasn’t the only one. The nogitsune had been destroyed—he glanced at a clock—less than seven hours ago; if Peter was tired, then Stiles must still be weak and off-balance and shaken, more so than he was ever likely to be again. Peter’s advantage would lessen with every hour he put this off, every moment he gave Stiles to recover, to _think,_ to bring that dazzling, labyrinthine intelligence of his to bear upon the questions of _what_ and _how_ and **_why_**. Stiles would force him onto the defence, if Peter let him, and if that happened Peter might as well bare his throat for the bear-trap jaws of Stiles’ mind, because Stiles would never let it go until he had the truth caught like a beating heart between his teeth.

He laid his hand flat on his front door, and briefly let his forehead rest against it, closing his eyes. Listened to the heartbeat on the other side, and felt his fingers throb with his claws’ desire to slide free.

Slide free, and tear down the door, and drag Stiles in and close and safe and tell him everything, tell him what he was, tell him what he could do and unleash him on the world and _watch_ —

Fuck. Peter exhaled hard, deliberately. _Fuck_. This was _madness_. Damn the idiot for not being home in his own bed where he should be, anyway, for dragging Peter out of his in the middle of the night after too long a day. Let him stand on the doormat all night if he wanted to, let him catch cold or pass out from exhaustion while Peter went back to bed, while Peter tried to sleep through the scent of Stiles’ blood and the memory of his light and the full-moon pull of his presence just outside the door—

Peter felt himself will his wards down, felt his own fingers turning the keys of lock after lock and pressing the door-handle open, and the only thing he couldn’t feel was surprise.

*

“Should I even bother asking how you found me?”

Stiles’ brain skipped like static, and he could almost feel his pulse leap too, hitch and stutter. He didn’t need to feel it, could _see_ it reflected in Peter’s face as clear as the neon spike on a heart monitor, for all that Scott, Derek, even Allison would have missed it: the precise fraction of an inch that Peter tilted his head, the micrometer-minute movement of his eyelids, the fleeting ghost of tension there-and-gone at the corner of the werewolf’s mouth. A reaction where no one else would have seen it at all.

Well. Lydia might’ve. Stiles never bet against Lydia. And even Lydia wouldn’t have blamed Stiles for that little jump, probably, because all werewolves were built like GQ models and Peter was always wandering around in those v-necked cardigans _with nothing underneath,_ and Stiles had been possessed and un-possessed and poisoned and undergone magical surgery all in the last 24 hours, but he was still a red-blooded seventeen-year-old and that was a _whole lot_ of shirtlessness to be faced with unexpectedly, okay.

Like. A lot. Peter slept without a shirt, because of course he did. And greeted middle-of-the-night visitors in the same state, because he had absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

“Please, I found this place twenty minutes after the realtor logged your purchase agreement, and it only took me that long because I left my phone at Scott’s and didn’t get the alert until I sat down at my laptop.” The scoffing tone came out on autopilot, and Stiles was grateful because his mouth was dry; he could remember being held against that chest, the steady beat of Peter’s heart as the werewolf cradled him. The warmth of Peter’s body, that sense of solid strength wrapped around him, and most of all the slow, unhurried, even sound of that heartbeat against Stiles’ ear had been more reassuring than the results of all the hours of tests—both the hospital’s and Deaton’s—that had declared him free and clear and clean.

“You have alerts set up to notify you of my financial movements,” Peter said slowly.

“And your actual locational movements, your internet search history, and any and all uses of any of your four passports,” Stiles added, mock-helpfully. “Mr Hale-Delaunay-Mirren- _Addams.”_

“Of course you do.” The werewolf paused a moment, clearly considering. “I think I’m flattered,” he decided.

“Why did you do it?” Stiles blurted. And damn it, he’d had a more graceful segue into that question planned, he’d plotted out a whole dialogue in his head, but the need to know was like razor glass in his throat, cold and bloody and shredding any other words he tried to speak.

Peter rolled his eyes and stepped back from the door. “I realise you and your friends are all hormone-riddled barbarians, but let’s at least _pretend_ to be civilised people and not have this discussion on the doorstep, please.”

Stiles licked his lips and tried to keep his fingers from twitching, from tapping out a rhythm only he could hear on his thigh. Every time his hands went to do that, he remembered his fingertips dancing over the hilt of the sword in Scott’s stomach, tapping out a quick and bright and bloody tune, and he felt sick at how not-sick the memory tasted. “Civilised? Doesn’t that disqualify you immediately?” he snarked as he stepped over the threshold.

Stepped past Peter, close enough to touch, to feel the furnace-hot werewolf-heat of him.

“You wound me, Stiles.” Peter closed the door behind him, and Stiles heard locks turning, metallic clicks that made him think of rounds being chambered. Manacles that could never hold him closing around his wrists. “Besides, _I’m_ not the one dropping by at a wholly unreasonable hour.”

“Yeah, well, I had questions and I’m not that great with delayed gratification,” Stiles said.

“Oh, but it can be such fun,” Peter murmured, almost as if to himself. “Drawing out the anticipation, honing the excitement, braiding it through with the possibility that it might not come at all… There’s much to be said for it.”

Stiles stared at him, heart suddenly pounding, something tight and hot and clawed twisting in the pit of his stomach.

Peter smiled. “What was it you wanted, again?”

“Why did you do it?” Stiles had seen—had memorised—the floor-plan of Peter’s ridiculously sized penthouse the day Peter bought it, and in the corners of his vision he caught flashes that on another day would have made him gape, glimpses of a rich, elegant luxury that made Lydia’s and even Jackson’s homes look like dirt huts in comparison; paintings under climate-controlled glass and a seamless, beautiful blending of centuries-old _objets d’art_ with furnishings so ultramodern they looked like something from science fiction; an honest-to-god _tapestry_ on one wall and a multi-storied library visible through an open doorway; something that might have been a 3D printer and something else that was _definitely_ the Heintzman crystal piano, holy _shit_. But right now, none of it mattered, none of it really processed; there was just Peter, leaning against a wall with his arms crossed over his bare chest, his head tilted with a playful inquisitiveness that fooled neither of them, and his eyes fixed on Stiles.

“You’ll have to be a little more specific,” Peter said.

“Why did you _save me?”_ It clawed itself out of Stiles’ throat, raw and half-choked. “You knew—you know—I _saw_ you see it, see _me,_ Scott didn’t and Lydia didn’t but _you did.”_ His hands had curled into fists at his sides without thought, his knuckles so white his nails cut into his palms. “You know what I—did, what I _am,_ why it _chose_ _me—”_

“I do.” Peter pushed himself away from the wall, and Stiles took a step back instinctively, because his mind shouted _you should have let me die_ but his body, his flesh and bone, reacted with primal programming to the animal _intensity_ in Peter’s face, the laser-like focus that locked onto Stiles like a sniper’s cross-hairs—like a wolf scenting blood. A slow, dark smile curved Peter’s lips like a blade at whatever he heard in Stiles’ heart, his eyes lighting with simmering blue fire at whatever he smelled in Stiles’ sweat, and Stiles didn’t know what that was, what signals he was giving off what he was _feeling,_ because Peter came towards him slow and deliberate and fucking _prowling_ and there was fire and ice beneath Stiles’ skin, steel and velvet, something like terror and something like exhilaration and something like starving, something that said _run_ and something that said _don’t_ and something that said _bare your teeth, stand your ground, make him kneel and beg and_ ** _break_** _for daring to think you prey_.

He was more terrified of that last voice than he could ever be of Peter.

“I do,” Peter repeated, and he was still moving forward and Stiles was still moving back, thinking of wolves driving a deer where they wanted it and of flinging Derek across the loft like a doll and of coming back from the poison with Peter’s claws on his face. He was breathing faster, could feel and hear it and knew Peter could too, could feel himself trembling with _want_ but he didn’t _know,_ want for _what,_ for escape or closer or tearing teeth and blood, relief or pleasure or pain, wanting to be hurt or not to be or to be the one doing the hurting—? “But then, I know a great deal about kitsune, Stiles.”

Stiles’ back hit a wall, and he froze.

He could have bolted, could have _tried,_ but his body locked like the safety catch of a gun as Peter closed the distance between them because if Stiles moved, if he pulled the trigger, he might—

He might—

 _Might_ **_what_ ** _—?_

“The question is,” Peter purred, and Stiles fucking _gasped,_ tried to catch it between his teeth and failed completely as Peter pressed the full length of his beautiful, powerful, dangerous body against Stiles’, with the same terrifying-maddening slow deliberation as every step that had led them here, gradually increasing the pressure to press him into the wall, _pin_ him to it and the total unyielding strength of him made Stiles shudder, made something in him melt and something else twist to the breaking point, made him pant and tremble and every breath he took scorched his throat, carried Peter’s scent and Peter’s _breath_ into his lungs, and something about that drove Stiles _crazy,_ crazier than the unmistakable, shameless hardness of Peter’s cock through his drawstring sleeping-pants, crazier than it pressing unyieldingly against his own, not even moving, not letting _Stiles_ move—no, it was the thought of all the tiny molecules of Peter passing through Stiles’ mouth and throat and into his lungs, from his alveoli into his bloodstream, into his _everywhere,_ everywhere inside him as Peter seemed to be everywhere _outside_ him, against him, chest-to-chest and thigh-to-thigh. The sweep of Peter’s mouth was sharp enough to cut Stiles open but Stiles already felt flayed, stripped bare; Peter laid his forearms either side of Stiles’ head to cage him in and he didn’t need to, the blue of his eyes seared Stiles to the core, set him alight and burned him down and lit the fuse of him, something building, something breaking, something going to _explode_ —“how do _you_ know?”

For a long, heady moment, Stiles couldn’t remember what Peter was talking about. He wasn’t sure he remembered his own _name_.

And then he knew he didn’t, because Peter ducked his head down and put his mouth just under Stiles’ ear and everything blazed blue inside him, Stiles smacked his skull back against the wall—no, into Peter’s palm, Peter’d moved his hand between Stiles’ head and the plaster quick as lightning, protecting him from himself, protecting him _again_ —and _arched,_ his spine curving and it was nothing like the poison, nothing like it, he just, he, wanted, _needed,_ his hands flew to Peter’s shoulders and he was gasping and digging his _~~(claws)~~_ nails in, they couldn’t _get_ closer but Stiles pulled at him anyway, clawed at him, tearing, he didn’t have names for the sounds he was making as Peter drew his lips open-mouthed down the line of Stiles’ jaw, down his throat—

Dragging his _teeth_ —

“Did it tell you, Stiles?” Peter breathed, and Stiles shuddered full-bodied, Peter’s mouth against his ear now and his hands sliding down Stiles’ body, his _claws_ grazing Stiles through his shirt and Stiles _ripped_ at him, didn’t mean to didn’t think to didn’t care he _had_ to, his nails tearing through Peter’s skin as Peter pinned Stiles’ hips even more firmly against the wall and rolled against him, sinuous, serpentine, sinful, Stiles wanted to scream at how maddening-good it felt and might have if he could have found the breath, if he could have, could have—

“Did it tell you that you were dark and terrible?” Peter whispered, his voice hoarser, rougher, maybe because his blood was on Stiles’ nails and Stiles fucking _sobbed,_ fighting to writhe and thrilling down to his core when he couldn’t, when Peter wouldn’t let him. “Did it tell you that you were made for blood and screams and power, that you were born to make the whole world bow and burn? Did it tell you the light would never fit inside you, that it would drown in you, because you are a depthless wonder, you are greater than them all, too beautiful and too wild and too glorious to be chained by their laws, their rules, their pathetic moralities? Terribly beautiful and beautifully terrible, they should beg for the privilege of kneeling to you, it told you that and you knew it already, you’ve always known it, Void let you taste their pain and it was what you’ve been craving your entire _life—”_

Stiles shoved his blood-tipped fingers into Peter’s short hair and dragged their mouths together, burning-desperate, starving, tears falling from his eyes as they closed because it was so true it hurt, so good it hurt, he needed Peter to stop and he needed him to never stop, needed to swallow every word down into the aching empty place where the nogitsune used to be, take them all inside himself and know that he was _known,_ seen, _understood;_ they’d pulled him from the Void and it had been like dying, losing the one who knew him better than anyone else ever could, knew all the fucked-up dark vicious ruthless parts of him and loved him for it, _chose_ him for it, twined around his soul and told him he was perfect _because_ of not in _spite_ of—

But Peter knew, _Peter knew,_ ** _Peter knew_** —

Peter made a startled, starving sound low in his throat as Stiles pulled him down and Stiles felt it like a line of fire down his spine, a thrill of power-lust that he could make someone sound like that, someone as dangerous, as always-controlled as Peter Hale, and god, fuck, he’d never been kissed like this, reeled between the contrast of Peter’s soft lips and hard mouth, opening Stiles up with sharp teeth and silken tongue, slick and cruel and filthy, licking Stiles’ moans out of him like he was feasting on every one, devouring them, devouring _Stiles,_ like he couldn’t get enough—

Stiles dragged his nails lightly down the back of Peter’s skull and felt the werewolf shudder, felt it like a drug; he did it again, harder, ripping down the back of the werewolf’s neck and Peter _snarled_ into his mouth, vicious and delicious, and Stiles felt the same sweet-sick thrill he’d felt as Void, feeding on the pain, feeling it light him up like foxfire— _brighter_ than foxfire, hotter-better- _more,_ because Peter didn’t try to pull away or escape it, Peter shoved harder against him and Stiles could feel the edge of desperation in it, the silver-sharp _need_ toxic as wolfsbane and addictive as heroin, Peter fucking Hale’s perfect’s control fraying at the edges, coming undone, his body grinding into Stiles’ and his hands everywhere, cradling Stiles’ face, dragging hungrily down his sides, clutching his hips, shoving at and under his shirt and frenzied, rabid for _him,_ for _Stiles_ and it was so good, it was so terrifyingly good, Peter’s claws dragging lightning over his skin, the claws that had ripped Kate’s throat out, that could tear Stiles apart like paper, and Stiles felt himself pushing into the razored points, panting, biting at Peter’s mouth, craving, crazed, there were too many fucking _clothes_ —

Some instinct-urge made him crook his fingers just-so, pressing the points of his nails into the back of Peter’s neck right where Scott had pressed his into Stiles for the mind-meld, and Peter went still against him. Stiles opened his eyes and found Peter’s right there, somehow both werewolf-bright and desire-dark at once; Stiles thought of Mission Bay in San Diego, the way the ocean there sometimes glowed blue at night as if the aurora borealis had been poured out of the sky and into the surf. Peter’s gaze looked like that, like phosphorescence over midnight waves, like magic and burning and drowning.

“If you want to stop,” Peter said, low and rough, “say so now. I won’t ask again.”

His pupils were dilated, blown. Deeper voids than the nogitsune had ever been.

Stiles pressed with his nails, used his grip to pull their foreheads together, lips so close they breathed each other’s breath. “I want you in me deeper than it ever was,” Stiles heard himself saying, not begging but _commanding,_ hissing it against Peter’s mouth. “I want you to fall into me, I want you to drown in me, I want to _swallow you whole—”_

Peter groaned and cut him off with a savage kiss, his hands briefly raking through Stiles’ hair. “You can try,” he breathed against Stiles’ lips, and in one quick motion his hands fell and ripped Stiles’ shirt open like it was nothing, like it was paper, like it was skin. Stiles caught his mouth again, hungry, following him when Peter stepped away from the wall so they could disentangle Stiles’ arms from the remains of his sleeves. The fabric fell to the floor and Peter’s claws sliced through Stiles’ belt, Stiles wrapped his arms around Peter’s neck and tangled his fingers in Peter’s too-short hair as the werewolf cut through the buttons on his jeans. Stiles didn’t hear them land on the carpet, was too busy wrapping his legs around Peter’s waist and toeing off his sneakers as the werewolf just grasped the back of his thighs and _picked him up,_ shoved them back against the wall again and Stiles was the one who snarled, the drag of skin-on-skin so blindingly good and the press of Peter’s cock against his stomach made his head spin but his fucking _jeans,_ the crotch of them was cut too low and too tight, he rocked his hips and nearly screamed with frustration when he could get hardly any pressure where he needed it—

He wrapped his hand under Peter’s jaw and shoved his head back, dragged his teeth down Peter’s neck and _bit_. “Get these off me, Peter,” he breathed through Peter’s strangled almost-shout. He knew the werewolf could still hear him. “Get them off and _fuck me.”_

Pain sang through him as Peter’s claws cut too deep this time, scratched long thin lines down the outside of Stiles’ legs, but the pain was a prize because it was a sign of how badly Peter was losing it, and that should have terrified him, it should have woken him up, should have made him realise how fucking stupid and dangerous and wrong this was, the hot stinging drag of a werewolf’s claws tearing him open too shallowly to bleed—but it thrilled through him instead, locked his legs tighter around Peter’s waist, not caring how it made it harder to shove the tatters of his jeans away, _out_ of the way, drunk on Peter’s kisses and his need and the feel of his skin, the heat of him that burned all the places the nogitsune had left cold.

“Did it tell you that you’re lethal?” Peter murmured hoarsely against his mouth. “Because you are. Brilliant, beautiful, lethal boy—” He held Stiles up one-handed without any sign of strain, running the other up Stiles’ spine, ghosting the points of his claws against the base of Stiles’ skull, tracing nerves so sensitive Stiles half-whimpered, tipping his head to bare himself to the touch, pleading for more of it, panting at the velvet static it sent softly shocking through him, that he could feel all the way down to his aching cock. The delicacy of the touch, knowing Peter only had to exert just a little more pressure, only needed one quick jab of claws into flesh to sever Stiles’ spine, slice through his brain-stem, kill him instantly—it just made it better, it was a _relief_ somehow, made him melt and moan and grind the damp cotton of his boxers, which were hanging on by literal threads after Peter cut his jeans away, into Peter’s rock-hard stomach. Somehow Stiles found his hands moving over Peter’s shoulders, sliding up his neck, found his palms brushing Peter’s jaw as Stiles kissed him. Cupping Peter’s face with Peter’s blood under his fingernails.

“Don’t let me hurt you,” Stiles whispered. It was nonsensical, he knew it—he didn’t have the nogitsune’s super-powers anymore, couldn’t pick up a werewolf and throw him across the room like a toy, couldn’t punch through a demon’s chest and rip its heart out, couldn’t swallow foxfire that would have burned a human alive—he was no threat to Peter at all—and yet. And yet. _Brilliant, beautiful, lethal boy;_ the words made him shudder with pleasure and fear in equal measure, made his veins run with molten honey and with ashes. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Peter nudged Stiles’ jaw, tipping Stiles’ head up, and Stiles let his head fall back, bared his throat not with trust but with anticipation-dread-demand, his fingers twisting into Peter’s hair and his whole body jerking around a cry as the werewolf’s teeth bit down, so delicately, precisely, perfectly cruel. It twisted like a knife in his gut, the pleasure and the pain together, flooding him with fire, proving he was _real,_ he was here and awake and his body was all his, unpossessed and free—

“Do you know what I heard just then?” Peter murmured, and he licked at the bite, the marks of his teeth that would linger, no nogitsune-quick healing for him now, Stiles should have cared and didn’t, only moaned at the sugared-chilli ache of Peter’s tongue stroking the wound, only wondered if it was saliva or blood he could feel trickling down to his collarbone, wishing he knew which he wanted it to be as Peter’s hand slid down his back again, pushed claw-sheathed fingers along the crease of his ass— “Your heart beating slightly faster over the words I. Don’t. Want.”

Stiles’ hips bucked completely without permission; he made some nameless, choked sound and nearly came right then and there, might have if Peter hadn’t done something quick and wicked with his fingers between Stiles’ legs, pressing between his hole and his balls through his boxers in a way that jerked him back from that precipice, but only just—fuck, only _just,_ because Stiles remembered, he fucking _remembered_ the last time Peter had said those exact words to him, and he’d been right then as he was right now, and god Stiles was sick, he was so fucking sick that that could hit him so hard and low and hot—

_Brilliant, beautiful, lethal boy—_

“I’m not saying goodbye this time, Stiles,” Peter breathed, and then he was crushing Stiles to him, taking his mouth like he’d take a kill, Stiles’ sore swollen mouth and Stiles clawed at him, clutched at him, biting and tearing and he nicked his tongue on one of Peter’s fangs, a bright flash of pain and then the taste of copper filled both their mouths and they moaned in unison, Peter’s melting into a delighted laugh, Stiles’ into a growl of impatient want, and fuck, Peter’s _strength,_ they were kissing and Peter was moving them, _finally,_ carrying Stiles through the apartment without any need to put him down and it drove Stiles wild, the power in the arms wrapped around him, the muscles shifting against Stiles’s chest, abdomen, between his legs. Peter could break him, Peter could protect him, could protect _himself,_ could take all that werewolf strength and drive it into Stiles until he _shattered_ —

 _I will kill you,_ Peter had promised Noshiko, and he’d said it with Stiles in his arms, he’d said it _for_ Stiles, _meant_ it for Stiles, with his heart underscoring the absolute truth of it with every steady beat, his willingness, his _readiness_ to kill for Stiles—

Why, why did that make him feel so perfectly safe and so utterly dangerous at the same time, so powerful and so shiveringly, deliciously weak; why did it make him want to tear Peter _apart_ and _be_ torn apart by him—?

He felt Peter stop walking, and Stiles opened his eyes, his heart racing, every nerve-ending straining towards Peter through his skin, reaching for him, howling for him.

“Your bedroom?” he asked, and was almost surprised to hear his own voice: husky, sultry, hungry. Nothing shy or hesitant in it.

“Mm.” Peter kissed him again, deep and slow with a predator’s lazy, easy confidence in its possession of its prey. “And you won’t leave it until I’m done with you.”

But then, how could he be shy with Peter looking at him like that? When he’d _made_ Peter look at him like that? How could he harbour the faintest flicker of insecurity about his body when Peter had laid hands on nearly every inch of it and called him _beautiful, lethal_ —? And as for his inexperience…

Stiles felt himself smirk, wicked and elated, and leaned in to bite Peter’s lip, very gently. “You know I’ve never done this before, right?” he murmured. Running the fingertips of one hand down Peter’s throat, onto his chest, playfully, teasingly. Knowing exactly, instinctively, how the knowledge would hit the werewolf like a silver bullet. “Not with anyone. Boy, girl, or other. Nothing but some kisses.” He brushed his lips over Peter’s cheek, tracing Peter’s cheekbone with his nose. “You’ll be my first everything,” he breathed.

The sound Peter made wasn’t even a little bit human, so savage-raw- _rabid_ that it exploded straight through to Stiles’ lizard-brain, a billion years of instincts recognising _danger-death-predator-_ ** _run_** _!_ as Peter fisted a hand in his hair and crushed Stiles’ mouth against his, under his, crescent-sharp teeth tearing him open and devouring—

And Stiles was sick, so sick, because he wanted to run _towards_ not away, instead of making him afraid it only thrilled him seared him made a wild thing of him too, feeling Peter coming apart under his hands, his lips, the shape and press of Stiles’ aching cock grinding through the soft damp cotton that was all that separated them—

 _“Lethal,”_ Peter gasped, growled, desire-approval-awe-want- _need,_ and he took a step forward and _tossed_ Stiles onto the bed, threw him down into thick silken softness, and Stiles bounced once and laughed, delighted with and thrilling in his own power, in the taste of Peter’s lust for him, tipping his head back and stretching hedonistically on the werewolf’s bed, arching his spine and his hips in a taunt, a dare, revelling in the drag of fabric on his skin and the burn of Peter’s eyes on him—

For the half-instant it took before Peter fell on him like a starving thing, a maddened thing, his pants discarded and his cock dragging naked against Stiles’ thigh, thick and hot and _real_ as he swallowed Stiles’ laughter in another of those deep vicious kisses that made Stiles shudder and melt for him, under him, open to him, drag him in and drag him _down_ and oh god it was so good, Peter’s solid heavy weight pressing him into the mattress, covering him, caging him, crushing him to powder as their hips moved, rocking, seeking. Peter’s claws caught on the last of Stiles’ boxers and then they were gone, there was only skin, heat, Stiles gasped into Peter’s mouth and heard-felt-tasted him purr, kicking Stiles’ legs apart with such fucking _casual_ strength that Stiles arched into him, helpless and feverish and so viciously _desperate_ as Peter moved over him, sliding their cocks together, slipping and slick like Peter’s tongue in his mouth—

Nothing had felt this real since the nogitsune started scratching at the door in his mind—nothing had _ever_ felt this real, this immediate, this urgent, this _good_ —

Peter’s mouth broke away from his to kiss his jaw, his neck, drag the sharp razors of his teeth over the pounding pulse in Stiles’ throat, over the marks of his earlier bite, and Stiles groaned and tipped his head back, baring his neck for Peter’s lips, his mouth, his tongue, his teeth, twisting his fingers in Peter’s hair to encourage him on. There was no stillness, only shifting restlessly and endlessly against the sheets, against Peter’s skin, under Peter’s stroking hands, under his hips, the friction, the pressure, and everywhere Peter touched was branded, every point of contact and sensation a line drawn around Stiles’ self, re-affirming the boundaries of the territory that was his body so he knew where it was, where and who _he_ was, not nogitsune or Void but _Stiles_ —

Brilliant, beautiful, lethal _Stiles_ —

And this was Peter, here and with him, wanting him, murmuring sin-sweet everythings against Stiles’ throat, in his ear, against his mouth as Stiles mapped the planes of the werewolf’s shoulders with his hands, the shape of his skull, the ivory sweep of his spine—the curve of his lips and the taste of him, the armoury of his teeth, the power that moved through every sleek muscle—Peter Delaunay-Mirren-Addams- _Hale,_ whose hands were stained as red as Stiles’ own, whom even death itself could not keep caged; Peter, who had seen him embrace Void and still wanted him, still come for him, still saved him—

Clawed hands on his face, a steady pulse beneath his ear, a voice saying _I do_ and _I don’t care—_

_You are a depthless wonder—_

It was like being the god and the sacrifice on the altar, both at once—

Peter pulled away from him, breathing hard, and smirked at Stiles’ rough sound of protest. “Lube,” he murmured, explanation and expiation, brushing his lips lightly over Stiles’—Stiles darted his tongue across the seam of Peter’s mouth, and revelled in the werewolf’s low groan.

“Ashmedai,” Peter said hoarsely, and Stiles grinned up at him, smug and wicked.

“King of Hell and prince of lust? I hope you don’t expect me to take that as an insult.”

“No,” Peter said. He dragged his thumb across Stiles’ lower lip, his pupils so wide and dark only a sliver of shimmering azure showed around them. “It’s only the truth.” He kissed Stiles again, bruisingly, and then pushed himself up and away.

Stiles propped himself up on one elbow to watch him, admiring the smooth flexing of lean muscle and feral grace, hunger and anticipation twisting together like heated wires inside him. For the first time, he saw Peter’s back as the man swung his legs onto the floor and reached for the bedside table, and felt a flicker of surprise: the room was dim, but enough light spilled through the uncurtained windows and from beyond the open bedroom door to make clear that, like Derek, Peter was tattooed—not with the same splayed-hand’s-width triskele as his nephew, but with three massive interlocked crescents that covered his entire back. One swept like a razored smile across his shoulder-blades, and the other two curved down before and behind and through it, interwoven, crossing each other in the process, all three black as ebony, as ashes. It was dark and stark and elegant, all sharp curves and deadly-looking points, the lowest of which reached all the way down to brush the base of Peter’s spine.

And probably it meant something, the way Derek’s triskele meant something—the three werewolf castes and their interconnectedness, the implication therein that the unity of the pack was the most important thing, the core of all—but for once Stiles’ curiosity was drowned out by something stronger. At some other time, any other time, he would have asked Peter about his tattoo, what it meant and when he’d gotten it and why—but not now, when even this brief pause made craving drag hot claws through his insides, made him feel touch-starved. Instead Stiles followed Peter up, looped his arms around the man’s torso from behind and put his mouth on that top _kukri_ _[1_ _]_ crescent, tracing the sweep of it with his tongue.

He hadn’t expected to, but he could taste it: bitter, and sweet, and strange in a way that set jewels on his tongue, that sent ribbons of embers braiding down his spine. It was unnaturally smooth under his lips, silky like a scar.

“I like it,” he said simply. He scraped his teeth over the back of Peter’s neck, and felt the werewolf shudder under his lips; the rush of dark, hot desire spilled into the pit of Stiles’ stomach like mulled wine, all sweet red heat.

Without answering Peter turned swiftly into his embrace and kissed him, hard and fierce and maybe desperate, pushing Stiles onto his back in the process. They hit the mattress together and Stiles arched into him, twisting around him, hooking his ankles around the back of Peter’s thighs to pull them closer together, to rock and grind and gasp and groan. But Stiles couldn’t hold him; Peter broke his grip with an ease that stabbed into Stiles like a blade still hot from the forge, pushing Stiles’ thighs apart and holding them flat against the bed, swallowing the sound Stiles made with that savage hunger, that primal, animal greed that made Stiles shake and burn and surge up into Peter’s mouth.

Which one of them was the more dangerous: the one with fangs and claws and a wolf’s tearing hunger—or the one that made him rabid and unleashed him?

The question simmered in the line Peter’s lips drew down Stiles’ throat, pounded in the pulse at the base of his neck, curled like heated satin under his collarbone. Peter’s hands held him down and his teeth dragged over Stiles’ ribs, sharp and catching at Stiles’s breath, breaking his harsh panting into a stifled gasp as Peter laved one hard nipple with his tongue, closed his teeth around it so fucking gently Stiles wanted to claw him, bite him bloody, one hand in Peter’s hair and the other fisted in the sheets, his hips jerking against Peter’s hold uselessly, helplessly. It felt like worship, Peter’s hands on him, the silken heat of his tongue drawing a line down Stiles’ body, his thumbs on the jut of Stiles’s hip bones stroking circles whose tenderness belied the sharp prick of his claws, and Stiles couldn’t breathe and didn’t want to, not with Peter shifting predator-smooth down the bed, moving down Stiles, leaving citrus-sharp bites and dark-chocolate kisses in his wake, sucking dark, bruising marks onto Stiles’ skin and Stiles wanted to snarl and wanted to sob, to beg and to command, hovering on a knife’s edge of black bliss between the two conflicting urges as Peter drew closer and closer to Stiles’ aching cock—

The blue glow of his eyes flicked up to watch Stiles’ face as if to be sure he was watching—as if there were any chance Stiles could have been looking anywhere _else_ —and if someone had asked him Stiles would have said he’d expected Peter to smirk, to look smug, silkily mocking and supremely pleased with himself for working Stiles into such a state—but Peter was none of those things; he looked up at Stiles and Stiles _saw_ him, saw into him, saw through the human skin and the wolf beneath it to the pomegranate-raw core of what Peter was, and it was like gazing into an obsidian mirror, staring into the abyss, the howling-burning-vicious thing inside Stiles perfectly reflected back at him through Peter’s eyes, every drop of his own savage hunger echoed in Peter’s face, the deadly joy and fierce shameless euphoria of being a monster and the need, the soul-screaming _need_ to share it, to run through the darkest woods alongside another, to be seen and adored and _known_ —

And in that moment Stiles understood it right down to the bone, wordless and absolute: Peter had saved him because they were both beautiful lethal things, and to let Stiles die would have been to doom himself to run alone through that inner forest, to howl and hear nothing but silence in answer.

Because before the nogitsune he’d glimpsed Stiles through the trees, running too fast to catch, too far away to be certain of, a shadow on silent feet refusing to answer Peter’s call.

But then Void had come, and Stiles’ soul had finally, finally howled, loud enough to make the stars ring with it: not with fear and terror, but with the joyous-defiant triumph of freedom and the rush of intoxicating power, a piercing cry of dark and untamed celebration, and Peter could no more have let it go unanswered—let it be silenced—than he could will himself not to breathe.

Lust was too small a word for it. _Love_ was too small a word. No human language had a name for what Stiles saw in Peter’s face then.

Or for what it made Stiles feel, to be allowed to see it, to see it at all, to recognise it, understand it, _know_ it—

“Peter,” he whispered, and the name was a prayer thick with fear and awe and longing on his tongue, blood and syrup and holy water—

As if he could only bear to be so naked for so long—naked in a way bare skin could never match—Peter ducked his head. He dragged his cheek against Stiles’ cock, open-mouthed, the points of his teeth trailing sweet fire down Stiles’ abdomen, and Stiles choked as much at the sinful sight of it as at the sensations. His hips bucked, helplessly, so hard only Peter’s werewolf strength kept him pinned to the sheets and Stiles’ fingers were still clenched in Peter’s hair, tightened and twisted as Peter turned his face to Stiles’ arousal, brushing his lips lightly against it, touching just the tip of his tongue to the flushed, swollen skin—

 _“Peter,”_ Stiles—gasped, whimpered, snarled, he could never remember which afterwards and it tangled together in his throat, in his head, in the pit of his stomach, in his cock that twitched heavily against Peter’s mouth, and Stiles nearly lost it completely as the little spurt of pre-come gleamed on Peter’s lower lip.

“Stiles,” Peter purred. His palms stroked from Stiles’ hipbones down his thighs, skimming the edges of his claws against soft, vulnerable skin. Stiles remembered how Scott’s flesh had opened beneath Kira’s sword and his eyes shivered closed; what _was_ this, this penance-pleasure, the black fire that coiled tongues of ebon flame around his bones every time he thought of how easily Peter could tear him apart? “There’s no need to hold back, sweetheart. Really, I don’t know if I should be insulted you’ve managed to hold on so long.”

“Don’t want to come until you’re inside me,” Stiles said without thinking, and Peter’s face, his playful smugness—it whited-out, everything human in it seared away in an atom-bomb flash. Before Stiles could take another breath Peter _lunged_ for him, was back on top of him and his mouth came down on Stiles’ like a lightning strike, flooding his every nerve and vein with skyfire, with power and light and heat until he shook and blazed with it, until he felt like living flame—

 _“Lethal,”_ Peter hissed against his lips, hoarse and wrecked, and Stiles wanted to laugh and purr and moan, licked back into Peter’s mouth and rolled his hips to rub them together, skin dragging on skin and Peter’s teeth sharp as knives as they parted for his tongue, letting him in, letting him _take,_ the rush of it enough to make Stiles shudder—

To be deemed a dangerous thing by someone like Peter, with his werewolf-strength and crescent-moon claws, who had cut through Beacon Hills like a scythe to avenge his pack—whom death itself had not been able to hold—to be caressed like a precious, priceless thing by hands that could destroy him without even trying—

It should have been horrifying.

It was everything but.

After some instantaneous eternity Stiles fisted a hand in Peter’s hair and dragged their mouths apart; his cock twitched against Peter’s stomach at the look on the man’s face, the dazed and rabid _hunger_. “I meant what I said,” Stiles told him. His tongue still stung where he’d cut it on Peter’s fang; his lips ached, hot and swollen. “I don’t want to come until you’re inside me. So _get inside me, Peter.”_

Some far-away and insignificant part of him couldn’t believe what he was saying, who he was saying it _to,_ the fierce and wild shamelessness he was drunk on. Stiles didn’t care about that small voice in the back of his mind, barely heard its stunned whispers, certainly didn’t _listen_. Not when Peter’s lips, just as kiss-bruised as Stiles’, parted around a soft snarl that stroked down Stiles’ spine like velvet and made him shiver; not when Peter darted down to kiss him once more, a kiss like burning brandy spilling down his throat, before moving to obey.

 _Peter_. Moving to _obey_. To obey _Stiles_.

 _Good boy,_ something in Stiles purred, hot and heady; the same silky, obsidian-fanged darkness that had wanted Peter on his knees and begging, _breaking,_ for looking at Stiles as if he were prey, earlier. But Peter hadn’t been thinking that at all, had he? No, he’d known what Stiles was—known it all along—

Couldn’t get enough of it—

Peter slid down Stiles’ body and Stiles pushed himself up on one elbow and watched him, amazed and aroused almost beyond bearing by the sight; the scratches Peter’s claws had left on his legs throbbed in time with the heavy pulse in his cock, and Stiles could already feel where his hips and waist would be bruised with Peter’s fingerprints tomorrow. He didn’t, _couldn’t_ resist as Peter pushed his thighs apart and settled himself between them, pressing his face to Stiles’ hip and inhaling deeply, as if the very scent of Stiles’ skin were a drug.

God, _nothing_ he and the nogitsune had done had made Stiles feel as powerful as the cobalt shimmer in Peter’s eyes when he glanced up at Stiles’ face to see him watching.

He had more sense than to actually murmur _good boy_ aloud, no matter how smoothly it rested on his tongue, but he slid a hand into Peter’s hair, letting his nails brush the back of Peter’s neck, and felt it low in the pit of his stomach as the werewolf shuddered for him.

And slowly, watching Stiles all the while through half-lidded eyes, tipped his head into the caress, just enough to deliberately bare his throat.

For Stiles. _To_ Stiles—

Whatever Peter saw in his face, it was enough to make him shudder again, closing his eyes briefly, though they were lit so brightly Stiles could make out the glow of them through his eyelids. Even through the dark roaring in his ears, even through the Void-vicious craving to drag Peter back up and flip him over and sink his teeth into the werewolf’s neck until he _bled,_ Stiles thought he’d never seen anything more beautiful, more intoxicating, than the radiance of Peter’s eyes burning too brightly for him to hide.

They left a blue glow on Stiles’ skin when they opened again, and Stiles half-imagined he could feel it, a whisper-warm caress, just before Peter turned his face and ran his tongue up the length of Stiles’ cock.

 _“Fuck!”_ Stiles jolted; only Peter’s hands on his thighs stopped Stiles’ hips bucking up against that wicked smirk. The muscles in Stiles’ arms trembled, threatening to drop him back onto the bed, but he didn’t want to lose sight of this, the curve of Peter’s lips as he licked another slow wet ribbon over Stiles from base to tip, only to lap at the head, at the pre-come beading and smearing there, and if his goal had been to clean Stiles up then it was completely backfiring because every stroke of Peter’s tongue only grew more filthy, saliva and pre-come mixing together under Peter’s lips and Stiles’ hips strained against Peter’s grasp with helpless little jerks, desperate for more, desperate to _come_ and just as desperate _not_ to, not yet, but oh, fuck, oh, _fuck_ —his knuckles went white in Peter’s hair and Peter’s growl of approval vibrated all through Stiles’ cock and Stiles was swearing, curses spilling from his lips and high, keening whines from his throat, the blue light of Peter’s eyes gleaming on the wet, slick mess between Stiles’ legs and Stiles’ toes curled with the effort of not coming all over Peter’s face.

He hardly noticed when one of Peter’s hands went away, except to wrap the freed leg around Peter’s shoulders, holding him close without thinking about it; later he didn’t remember hearing the cap of the lube clicking open, though it must have, because Peter’s lips closed around the head of Stiles’ cock just as his fingers slid slickly between the cheeks of Stiles’ ass and against his hole.

Stiles nearly cried out, bucking up; and then he _did_ make some loud nameless noise because Peter _let him,_ let him thrust up and push deeper into Peter’s mouth in the process, his cock sliding between Peter’s lips and over his tongue, all hot wet vicuna taking him in and _sucking,_ leisurely, fucking _evilly,_ and Stiles didn’t need to look to _feel_ Peter’s smirk wrapped around him. Not that he could look away, even for a second, even with the arm propping him up shaking with the strain of not just collapsing back on the bed and bucking into Peter’s fucking _mouth,_ his deadly-beautiful-wicked _mouth,_ all sharp silk tongue and sharper fangs and the relief-release-terror-thrill of knowing that Stiles had never been more vulnerable, not even when a spirit of chaos had been slithering into his fucking _head_ —

As Void—it had felt so good to be so powerful, so in control; and it still did, he still _was,_ Peter’s eyes burned that bright a blue because Stiles lit the fire but there was something—something about knowing how easily Peter could hurt him—something about surrendering to that, and to the pleasure, in a way that was nothing like letting the nogitsune in had been—something about knowing that there was someone who could _stop_ him if he couldn’t or wouldn’t go back, now, to being good, being human, being _Stiles_ instead of _Void_ —

_(Even though Peter would never stop him, even if he could; would be right there beside Stiles as the blood splashed and the ashes rained down and why had the nogitsune never thought to ask Peter to play with them, oh god it would have been so good, the games they could have played together—)_

_(Even though Stiles didn’t_ want _to go back and didn’t know how, how to close the Pandora’s box in his deepest self now it was open, how to pretend he wasn’t what he was: someone Void could fit inside like a tailored glove, someone who had danced with Chaos and loved it, someone who had exulted in_ ‘It is now’ _and had hurt, hurt like dying, when he’d been pried free from the spirit’s sick-sweet embrace—_

 _Someone who’d overturned the board when he saw his friends watching him play and felt like such a coward, such a two-faced, back-stabbing traitor, for doing that to the one person who’d known him completely and loved him anyway, loved him_ because _—)_

 _(It wasn’t love, it was killing him, he knows it all and yet it doesn’t seem to_ matter _—)_

Peter’s fingertips were satin-rough beneath the lube, cruelly gentle, tender torture stroking over Stiles’ hole again and again, circling it, pushing just enough to barely dip inside, enough to make Stiles jolt and gasp and thrust up into his mouth and Peter just _took_ it, letting Stiles slide in almost all the way into his _throat,_ and it was all jagged shards of lightning crashing together and interlocking in a flash of searing blue heat, Peter’s fingers and his tongue and his smirk wrapped around Stiles’ cock, his eyes like marsh-fire in the dim room and it was all so good, so _much,_ like being Void again, except instead of devouring agony he was feasting on pleasure, it was filling him up until there was nothing else and Stiles felt drunk on it, wild with it, heard himself snarling with impatient, vicious _desire_ and felt Peter groan around him.

Stiles slid his hand down the back of Peter’s head, pressed his nails to the back of Peter’s neck again, right where an Alpha would slide their claws into his soul. _“Now,_ Peter,” he ordered, his voice pitched low and dark and demanding—and felt the darkness in him crack apart again as Peter’s finger pushed into him, slow and steady and strange, making him _Stiles_ again, a wise-cracking teenager looking to lose his virginity and not a, not a—

_Beautiful, brilliant, lethal boy—_

It ached, a little; Stiles had tried this once or twice by himself but Peter’s finger was thicker than any of his, and longer _(and could grow clawed, could turn razor-sharp at any moment)_ , immediately and obviously different—but it wasn’t _bad,_ it was fine, Stiles was just impatient to get on with—

And then a wave of bright silver rapture pulsed through his body, lighting him up like a nebula, and Stiles nearly screamed, only managed not to because it hit him on the in-breath and he choked on it instead, forgot how to breathe as molten silver spilled through his every nerve-ending, pouring from Peter’s finger to gild him inside, every vein, every _cell_ —

Peter let Stiles slip from his mouth and laughed softly; he licked a slow, wet stroke over Stiles’ cock, watching him. “Did you think we could only take pain?” he asked, fucking _purred,_ and another throbbing wave of pleasure seared through Stiles, an aurora borealis all in shades of burning blue bliss curling and blazing inside him, flooding him from toes to skull sweet as honey, if he screamed now would light or ambrosia come spilling out of his mouth—?

“Oh, god,” Stiles choked, “oh, _fuck,_ oh god, what are you, Peter, fuck, _Peter_ —”

Peter pushed a second finger into Stiles and Stiles came instantly, went supernova, so much so good and he probably did scream, spine a crescent-moon arch lifting him off the bed with Peter’s mouth quickly back around his cock, swallowing him down, taking it all as Stiles bucked and writhed and came apart, shattering around the silver Peter was still pouring into him, wave after silken wave of it, what did it matter if he swore by God or by Peter when right here, right now they were the same thing—?

“You did come with me inside you,” Peter said smugly when Stiles collapsed against the mattress, trembling with the sweet aftershocks. The werewolf crooked his fingers and yeah, no, refraction time was apparently not an issue with werewolf magic playing your pleasure receptors like harp-strings and making them sing. It should have hurt, probably, getting so hard again so fast, but Peter’s fingers just kept stroking in and out of him, nuzzling and lapping at Stiles’ cock, and it was _so_ good, Stiles couldn’t stop shivering and twisting his hips and panting as Peter worked him back up. Not that he’d really let Stiles come down to start with.

“Cheat,” Stiles managed, and Peter laughed, dark and delighted, sending another steel-razor shiver down Stiles’ spine and another ripple of that supernatural power twisting hot and sleek up inside him. _“Fuck_. No w-wonder Allison went straight from Scott to another werewolf, this is _so_ not in the Bestiary—”

Peter nipped his thigh. “Please. Just because we _can,_ doesn’t mean we all know _how_. I guarantee your friends have no idea how to properly please a bed-mate. I know my nephew doesn’t.” He flicked a look up at Stiles’ face. “And that is the last mention of _Scott_ I will tolerate in my own bedroom, thank you.”

It was Stiles’ turn to laugh, breathless. “No, but seriously, we should put it in the Bestiary, they’d make you guys a protected species in seconds if they knew you could _holy fucking shit—”_

He lost his words for a while, which was no doubt Peter’s intention. After that first brutal-bliss jolt to shut him up, though, Peter kept the pleasure to languid waves, lapping at Stiles’ body like silver surf. Stiles’ pulse skipped and his head fell back, lips parting on nothing, no curses or gasps just, just— _feeling_ it, the slow thrust in and out of Peter’s fingers, a little deeper every time, anticipation beating bronze wings in his ears, strobing in his head, blurring into the twist of Peter’s tongue, everything simultaneously winding tighter and tighter and turning hot and molten inside him, melting, melting _open_ for that second finger, and then a third, and Stiles didn’t remember deciding to move but he found his hips rolling with it, slow and easy and anything but, all at once. It was like a dream and a nightmare twisted into one, the hazy taffy-sweet stretching of time and the taut-wire tension, the feeling of flying and falling, spiralling from one to the other and back again with the crook of Peter’s fingers, the graze of his teeth, the tide-like rise and fall of his power—

Stiles was either going to hit the sun or crash to earth and he didn’t want to, not again, not yet—savagely, _viciously_ didn’t want to, and he didn’t know if he was ready, prepped enough, but ready or not he was _ready_ —

And his nails were still on the back of Peter’s neck.

He pulled—pulled with his nails, sharp and brutal and dragging Peter off of him, and Peter made that sound again as Stiles’ cock slipped from his mouth; low and animal, something caught between a moan and a snarl, arching to press his neck into Stiles’ human-claws, baring his throat in the same motion, and the look he gave Stiles was all hunger and challenge, _daring_ him—

Daring him to be lethal—

And Stiles slipped his legs from the werewolf’s shoulders and dragged him up, his free hand flying to clutch at Peter’s hair and pull him back up Stiles’ body so they were face-to-face again, those blue eyes deadly-dark even as they burned, lips red as blood as Stiles pulled them down onto his, surging up into the kiss even as Peter fell on him like a starving wolf. His hands were clawed again as they ran greedily down Stiles’ body, catching on the soft skin of Stiles’ thighs as he pushed them where he wanted them and Stiles could taste himself in Peter’s mouth, not a good taste but one that made his whole body clench tight with hunger and heat anyway.

“Condom,” he managed when they broke for air.

Peter bit Stiles’ lip, and Stiles shuddered, his cock twitching against Peter’s stomach. “I don’t have any.”

Everywhere they touched Stiles could feel the silver threads of Peter giving pleasure unspooling into him, and they were touching _everywhere;_ he had a flash of what it would feel like with Peter’s cock inside him, and nearly whimpered, nearly let it go, but he’d been raised smarter than that, damn it. “Bullshit,” he accused, flexing his nails on Peter’s neck; the werewolf’s hips jerked sharply, something like a hiss escaping from between Peter’s teeth. “You have some, go get one so you can _fuck me.”_

“Why would I have condoms here?” Peter asked hoarsely. He nudged his hips forward slyly, his cock sliding against Stiles’ ass and Stiles _snarled_ at him, reactive, bestial; he _raked_ his nails down the back of Peter’s neck and heard him choke, saw his eyes roll back a little.

“Don’t you dare,” Stiles hissed, fury like dark wine rushing through his veins. “Condom, Peter. _Now.”_

“I don’t have any,” Peter repeated, hoarse, and Stiles felt himself bare his teeth.

“I don’t believe you.” His hand trailed down from the already-healing scratches he’d left on the back of Peter’s neck—and slid to smoothly grasp his throat, the throat Peter had bared for him, tight and hard. Peter moaned, his eyes fluttering closed and his pulse racing under Stiles’ fingertips, and he was so beautiful like that Stiles almost forgot what he’d been saying. Almost. “Don’t tell me everyone you bring back here forgets basic sex ed when you bat those pretty blue eyes at ’em—”

“I don’t _bring_ people here.” Peter looked drugged—probably why he hadn’t made Stiles pay for calling him pretty—and without thinking Stiles found himself stroking his thumb up and down the side of Peter’s throat, revelling in it when Peter shuddered full-bodied for him. “It’s a non-issue for werewolves anyway, since we can’t catch or carry human diseases, but on those occasions I feel the need for another body,” and it was the way he said it, _another body,_ making it so clear that that was all they were, “I make a call to one of several discreet escort services and meet them at a hotel. If they want condoms they bring them themselves so I don’t have to bother thinking about it. _I don’t bring people here.”_

Stiles’ thumb stilled on Peter’s throat. He stared up at the werewolf, and Peter stared down, his eyes dark even through the azure fire in them, and it happened again: they _saw_ each other, monster to monster, stripped naked of all masks and pretence, obsidian mirrors reflecting back each other’s howling hearts into infinity—

There was no telling who moved first: Stiles surged up and Peter lunged down and they kissed like comets colliding, all teeth and heat and Stiles’ fingers sliding into Peter’s hair and Peter’s hands dragging claws and silver bliss over Stiles’ hips and thighs, lifting them so Stiles could wrap them around his waist, skin dragging against skin and three of Peter’s fingertips still just a little slick and Stiles’ blood was a rushing roar in his ears. He wrapped one arm around Peter’s shoulders and Peter was licking into his mouth and pushing himself forward, his cock silky with lube—when had he done that?—as it slid against Stiles’ perineum and down, one of Peter’s hands guiding it and the other wrapped around Stiles’ thigh, fingertips just brushing the scratches his claws had left earlier and pushing thin silver threads into them, mixing pleasure into the stinging pain and Stiles bit him for it, for how shudderingly-good it was, for the anticipation-dread-desire- _now_ whirlpooling in the pit of his stomach.

The head of Peter’s cock brushed Stiles’ hole, and the werewolf broke off the kiss. “Show me,” he murmured, almost against Stiles’ lips, hunger so raw Stiles could nearly taste it.

“Ruin me,” Stiles hissed, and Peter snarled against his mouth and pushed into him.

It wasn’t gentle and it wasn’t quite slow but it was exactly, _exactly_ what Stiles wanted, everything he’d craved and more than he’d imagined; the thick burning ache of someone else’s flesh sliding into his, bruising and sweet and strange; the heavy weight of Peter’s body over him, pressing him down, pressing _into_ him, solid and real; the taste of Peter’s breath on his tongue, their mouths so close they almost touched, the hyperawareness of his lips as seemingly the only place they _weren’t_ touching; the sharp delineation of their bodies even as they interlocked because Peter’s ran just a few critical degrees too hot to be human, just enough to whisper _werewolf_ down Stiles’ spine, just enough to spiral down into Stiles’ cold dark hollowness and light it up with incandescent blue.

It was all he could see, that azure blaze. Even when he closed his eyes, letting himself gasp instead of hiss, letting his head fall back with a shuddering whimper, baring his throat in a tease that wasn’t teasing at all—there was the blue fire, and Stiles let it drive away, just for a minute, the wild snarling darkness inside of him, let it burn through the part of him that was dangerous to the part that was defenceless, raw, young and vulnerable; he let the masks and armour fall away and showed Peter exactly what he’d wanted to see, the desecration of the one little bit of innocence Stiles had had left and Stiles feeling every second of it—

Peter’s teeth closed around his throat, and the silver spilled from his teeth into Stiles’ veins in whorling, star-bright curlicues and distantly Stiles wondered if this was what the Bite was like, pleasure so bright and strange it hurt as it seared through you.

If it was, no wonder some people died of it.

Peter let go of his neck, but the silver still stroked through Stiles in shimmering waves, rippling through him from Peter’s hands and the lap of his tongue over Stiles’ lip, from every place they touched and Stiles moaned, arching into it because he’d so, _so_ underestimated how that werewolf-magic would offset and twine with the dull pain of being fucked, how it would melt into the heat of Peter’s body and the brush of his claws over Stiles’ skin. It made every scratch and bite and bruise sting and sing, jewels set in flesh Peter was replacing cell by cell with precious metal—and that was all on top of, or beneath, the purely mortal pleasure-strangeness of two bodies joined, the terror-thrill of the raw intimacy of it, the vulnerability of being open and full of someone else, not just someone-anyone but _Peter,_ werewolf, adult, the worst monster Stiles knew—

_(Even Duecalion never came back from the dead, even Jennifer had been human, even Jackson-as-kanima was only being controlled the whole time—)_

He opened his eyes.

—except for the one he saw reflected back at him in Peter’s gaze, his own face rendered in cobalt fire.

It should have been terrible, not beautiful, that realisation-reminder, but it was both, _terribly beautiful and beautifully terrible_ and the wild rush of it was beyond words, those blue flames licking over Stiles’ black-oil-core and igniting with a roar, the wild darkness that had never belonged to Void surging through him again and Stiles leaned up and caught Peter’s mouth with his teeth, pulling him down with the fingers still in the werewolf’s hair, the arm wrapped around his shoulders, tightening his legs around Peter’s waist as he swallowed Peter’s snarl and it should have been horrifying, terrifying, Stiles knew it and didn’t care, laughed with rich and bloody delight as he stole Peter’s lips and tongue and breath, daring him, teasing him, challenging him.

_Touch me with your bloodstained hands, kiss me with your killing teeth,  burn me down with your blue fire—_

_Give it to me, give it_ all _to me—_

He ran his palm down the back of Peter’s neck, and up again, stroking over the healed-smooth skin—and _stabbed_ his nails in deep, deep enough to feel wet blood against his fingertips, feel it spilling down like a collar of crimson wire around Peter’s throat, dripping onto Stiles’ collarbone warm as tears—

And Peter broke like a bone for him.

Stiles felt the difference in the splinter of a second before Peter moved, tasted it as Peter’s teeth were suddenly sharp as shards and Stiles’ mouth was full of blood, his own as Peter’s snarl savaged his lips and the blinding blue neon leaving sunspots on his vision and Stiles was laughing, was moaning, was maybe even screaming as he was suddenly the only human in the room, whatever shape Peter wore it was the _wolf_ in bed with Stiles now and oh, god, it hurt, it did, but it hurt like fire, like lightning, jagged bolts of flashing silver spearing through him as Peter thrust so hard, too hard, not hard enough, dragging his clawed hands over Stiles’ thighs and waist and shoulders as if he wanted Stiles closer, wanted in deeper, wanted to tear him open and eat him alive and Stiles twisted bloodstained fingers in Peter’s hair, urging him on, sick and wrong and wild with triumph and power and pain, pain Peter snatched away even as he gave it, a dizzying whirl of a storm spinning Stiles ’round and ’round and upside-down, the silver currents of blazing bliss rushing into him and the black coils of pain slithering out and the hot solid weight of the werewolf’s body the only anchor, moving over him, moving _in_ him, rough and raw and _real_ —

But not deep enough.

_‘I want you in me deeper than it ever was—’_

Stiles _moved_.

 _‘I want to_ **_swallow you whole_ ** _—”_

It was something Alison had shown him and Lydia in one of their _how-to-be-human-and-survive-the-supernatural_ training sessions, and it probably only worked because he whimpered prey-sweet and sugar-soft into Peter’s mouth to distract him _(not only to distract him)_ first; he felt Peter’s low growl of savage, hungry approval reverberate in his chest _(it skittered over Stiles’ every bone)_ and then Stiles had him, one leg trapping Peter’s and one arm hooking over the werewolf’s shoulder and the twist of his hips, shoving down against the bed with his other foot, made Stiles groan and Peter snarl, and almost before Stiles flipped them over Peter was sitting up, surging up to meet him, wrapping an arm around Stiles’ waist to settle Stiles in his lap.

Distantly, Stiles noticed that Peter’s other hand was a clawed fist in the sheets, shredding the fabric in his grip. But that was far away, far away and irrelevant; he moaned, rolling his hips a little, stunned by and revelling in how much of Peter this position let him take. He did it again, pressing forward a little to grind his cock into Peter’s stomach, falling back to screw himself open. His hands were in Peter’s hair again, restlessly carding through it as he figured out how to move, how to _take_ —

He didn’t realise he’d closed his eyes until Peter made a sound like a wordless prayer of violence and lust; when he opened them he saw the werewolf staring up at him as if drugged, watching him with a raw and starving desire. His eyes burned darkly, and his mouth was smeared with Stiles’ blood; without thinking Stiles cupped Peter’s face and bent down to him, licked his own blood from Peter’s lips until they parted for him with a groan.

Stiles was still bleeding. It slicked the slip and slide of their mouths, their tongues, dark, coppery silk spilling down their throats, dripping down their chins. When Peter’s hand pressed against the small of Stiles’ back, pulling him, pushing him, showing him how to rock his hips—when Stiles broke the kiss to let his head fall back with the intoxicating pleasure-pain-power of it all, shuddering-simmering through him—when Peter buried his face in Stiles’ bared throat with another saw-toothed groan, thrusting up to meet him so silver fire burst behind Stiles’ eyelids, Stiles felt the wet of Peter’s lips against his skin and knew it was his own blood, and his knuckles went white where they twisted in the werewolf’s hair.

His body rose and fell, again and again, his hips rolling slow as summer surf; savouring, lingering. But it was too good, too much, and Peter’s hands settled on his hips, his ivory claws pricking Stiles’ skin, black and silver threads twining around his fingers, drawn out of Stiles’ body or sliding into him like Peter’s cock, pleasure so bright and pure it was cruel, a razor of bliss. His hands tightened on Stiles and Stiles’ pulse raced, thinking of that werewolf strength, _feeling_ it twist deep into the pit of his belly as Peter lifted him and pulled him down with every thrust, moving him as easily as a doll, a grip Stiles couldn’t escape if he tried. And if he did, if he tried to run, Peter would only catch him and drag him down before Stiles even reached the bedroom door, before he reached the edge of the _bed,_ even—

“I thought he was you,” Peter said hoarsely. He dragged his teeth across Stiles’ jugular, star-splinter sharp, and Stiles shuddered, whimpered, jerked his hips hard in Peter’s hold. “Your scent was on his jacket…”

“What?” Stiles barely heard, didn’t understand, didn’t care with the silver ensnaring him like Sleeping Beauty’s killing rose-vines, closing around him like a cage, Peter’s cock thick and hot inside him, sliding, thrusting, a bright blue spiral twisting tighter and tighter in his core—

Peter raised his head, pressed his lips to the corner of Stiles’ mouth. “That night,” he said, and his voice was rough, guttural as if he were mid-change, moon-drunk, a wolf trying to shape human words. “I was confused, reeling from taking an Alpha’s power, more than half-mad from the burns, the memories, the coma…There were two boys in my woods, my territory, and one—one stank of fear, and the other was fearless. He hunted for death and was _excited_ by it, _wanted_ to find it. Which meant he wanted to find _me.”_

Stiles was breathing faster; his skin felt drawn tight and hot over his bones. He couldn’t—he didn’t—he whimpered again, bucking in Peter’s hold, and his cock jerked in the tight press between them, slick and messy with pre-come, dragging against the werewolf’s skin with every thrust—

Peter’s mouth brushed along Stiles’ jaw. “Your scent was on Scott’s jacket,” he whispered. “I thought he was you. I wanted _you,_ Stiles. I knew you’d make such a beautiful monster—lethal—strong—brilliant—and you did. You _do.”_

He sounded…he sounded like he was on his knees before a god’s altar, and Stiles couldn’t imagine Peter ever kneeling, ever submitting that wholly, no matter how great the Greater Power—

Except. He’d bared his throat for Stiles, hadn’t he?

Oh, god, the silver—the blue—

“It was supposed to be you,” Peter said, like he was falling, like Stiles was swallowing him whole after all—only Stiles couldn’t tell who had who—which of them had the other—who was in control— “It was you I meant to Turn. I wanted _you.”_

And maybe every word of it was a lie, Peter had always lied as smoothly as Lucifer, but—

Stiles dragged his fingers through Peter’s hair, ran his palms over the back of the werewolf’s skull. “Bite me now,” he breathed against Peter’s lips, stroking a fingertip along the line of drying red around Peter’s neck, the collar of blood— “Peter. _Bite me now.”_

For an instant their eyes met, and Stiles had no name for the expression on Peter’s face—wondering, fierce, starving, awed, savage, collared—

_Mine—like me—_

And then Peter ducked his head under Stiles’ chin and Stiles tipped his head back, pressed Peter’s face into his neck, urging-commanding-wanting-needing as those teeth closed around his throat like something beautiful, like jewellery—

Like something brilliant, and beautiful, and lethal—

And suddenly Peter surged forward, driving his fangs into Stiles’ skin, slamming Stiles onto his back again, and the pain met and meshed with the spiralling silver, the blood and the meat and Stiles clung to the monster as if to a life-raft, locking his legs around Peter’s hips, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, fisting a hand in his hair, shattering under the wolf’s body over and over with every rutting thrust, snarling and sobbing and screaming until Peter sealed his bloodied mouth over Stiles’, not to silence him but to take the sounds for himself, into himself, and afterwards that was always how Stiles would remember it: the taste of his own blood on Peter’s lips as the world exploded into blue and silver, silver and blue, detonating into something as far beyond pleasure and pain as it was beyond the ability of words to describe.

At some point he felt Peter shudder above him, and come, inside him, a rush of wet heat into bruised, raw flesh, and that, too, was viciously, impossibly perfect.

Stiles had lost all sense of time a while ago; he didn’t know how long the two of them lay there, breathing hard, still joined, echoes of pleasure and throbbing ripples of pain shivering through them both. Peter was still taking his pain, or at least some of it; when he nuzzled Stiles’ mouth, and softly kissed it, Stiles’ savaged lips hurt far less than they probably should have done. Their tongues stroked lazily between their mouths, slow and easy, rich and sweet, until Stiles turned his face away, not in rejection, but just to breathe.

“Addams?” he asked finally. As if he wasn’t bleeding and bruised, wasn’t lying naked in Peter Hale’s bed. Didn’t have Peter’s softening cock inside him. “Really?”

Peter smirked. _“‘We gladly feast on those who would subdue us’_ is a crede I can get behind, even if they butchered the Latin.”

And Stiles couldn’t do anything but laugh.

*

Unsurprisingly, Stiles’ energy faded quickly as the rush of adrenaline and endorphins settled; it was something of a miracle—and rather personally flattering—that he had stayed awake so long, after all he’d been through in the last 24 hours. Peter took enough of the teenager’s pain to allow him to drowse comfortably as Peter reluctantly left the exquisite tableau he made sprawled on Peter’s bed to fetch the necessities.

He returned to find Stiles more than halfway asleep, which was probably for the best; Peter would have been too tempted to try for another round if Stiles hadn’t been so clearly in need of rest. He hardly stirred as Peter used a damp washcloth to wipe him clean of blood and semen, and only murmured nearly inaudible nonsense syllables when Peter carefully applied a healing salve— _not_ one of the estimable Dr Deaton’s—to the worst of the teenager’s cuts and bruises.

He brushed the magic-imbued cream over Stiles’ lips with his thumb, gently, and used the same care to apply it internally, sliding his fingers between Stiles’ legs and into his body to massage the honey-scented stuff into beautifully abused flesh. There was an undeniable thrill to touching Stiles so intimately while he was unaware of it; as near to unconscious as made no difference, terribly, stunningly vulnerable. Peter couldn’t quite resist the urge to stroke, so very lightly, over the boy’s prostate; the faint shiver that ran through Stiles’ body at the touch made Peter’s teeth ache to bite into the back of his neck, roll him over and have him just like this, slack and loose and soft, that beautifully terrible creature rendered into something Peter could mount and rut and _own,_ for however short a time. The thought was intoxicating in a completely different way than meeting what Stiles would probably insist on naming his ‘dark side’ had been; teasing the wolf’s prey-instinct, and the man’s urge to cage and possess, rather than seducing wolf and man alike with the appeal of a true peer, however young.

He massaged a different ointment into the marks he’d left on Stiles’ throat, watching as they closed over and faded a little. Nothing he possessed could heal Stiles completely; his injuries didn’t melt away and vanish as they would have on a werewolf, but the magic in the various bottles and jars sped their healing, as though it had been days and not minutes since they’d been inflicted. It was the best Peter could do—and, however much his baser instincts wanted to see Stiles covered in his claim, necessary. There would be far too many irritating questions to answer—not to mention a shotgun-wielding father to deal with; how far would the Sheriff’s gratitude for Peter’s saving his son’s life extend? Best not to find out—if Stiles were unable to walk tomorrow.

Later today, rather. It really was abominably early.

His phone rang as he was boxing up his medical supplies, and Peter picked up device and elderwood chest both before Stiles could stir, slipping into the ensuite bathroom. Only a few numbers had the necessary permissions to make it through his phone’s night-mode; a glance at the screen made him smile as he swiped to answer the call. “Miss Martin?” he said politely, softly enough not to disturb Stiles in the next room.

“Peter,” Lydia acknowledged crisply. “Stiles is missing. His father took him home from the hospital around midnight, and he supposedly went to bed then, but he wasn’t in his room when the Sheriff checked in on him a little while ago. Do you know where he might be?”

This was why her number was on the whitelist: because she only called if it mattered, and she never wasted his time. She offered no apology for disturbing him at this hour, and he liked her better for it. Almost as much as he appreciated the keen intelligence that had her calling him at all. Were he a betting man, he would place a great deal of money on the likelihood that no one else in Scott’s little band of misfits had thought or wanted to consult him, despite Stiles having every reason to crave the proximity of the one who’d saved him. Plagued by memories that played like nightmares, shaken and left raw by the night’s events, he might well have turned  instinctively to the one source of proven safety. It would have been a perfectly understandable reaction.

But then, Peter doubted anyone, even Derek, could imagine finding _Peter_ a reassuring presence.

Except Lydia. Not for the first time, Peter felt a fleeting regret for the necessity of the actions that had alienated her from him. She would make a formidable ally—and an exquisite wolf, if not for her immunity to the Bite. However well that immunity had served him, in the end.

“Stiles is with me,” he said simply.

“I thought he might be,” she said, once again confirming his opinion of her intellect. “Is he all right?”

“He was distressed when he arrived,” Peter said, which was perfectly true, if misleading. “But he’s sleeping soundly now, and I’d rather not disturb him. Please reassure the Sheriff that all is well, and I’ll escort Stiles home in the morning.” He paused, considering the likelihood of Stiles getting up before noon. “When he wakes,” he corrected himself.

He heard her cover her phone to consult with someone else. Even werewolf hearing didn’t allow him to hear more than the phone transmitted; he was hampered by the technology’s relative deafness. But it was another safe bet that she was passing his words on either to Stiles’ father or to Scott.

“Acceptable,” she said briskly when she returned. She’d spoken to the Sheriff, then; Scott would have put up much more of a protest. “Thank you for clearing that up for us. And for taking care of him.” _Whatever your motives,_ he could almost hear her thinking. “Good night, Peter.”

“Believe me when I say that the honour is mine,” he said, unable to resist. Let her stir _that_ into her stew of suspicions. Besides, it was nothing but the truth. “Good night, Lydia.”

He put the potions away and made his own ablutions before allowing himself to return to bed, a soft thrill not racing but drifting through him as he slipped beneath the sheets and drew Stiles against him.

“An honour, huh?” Stiles said blearily, without opening his eyes.

Peter kissed the back of his neck. “Go back to sleep, Stiles,” he murmured.

“M’kay.” Belying his promise, Stiles wriggled to turn in his arms and nuzzled into Peter, tucking his face against the werewolf’s chest. “You’re so _warm,”_ he sighed blissfully.

And Void had been cold, and left him even colder when they were separated, before it was destroyed.

“Sleep, silver boy,” Peter said, still more softly. From a space inside him he’d thought as dead and cold as his family’s ashes an impulse rose, irresistible; as if from very far away, he saw his thumb gently trace a crescent moon on the boy’s brow. Waxing, for blessing, benediction. “Sleep.”

He felt the last of the tension in Stiles’ body melt away, listened to his breathing deepen and slow as he slid into dreams as trustingly as any cub nestled against one who was pack.

But it was a long, long time before Peter closed his eyes and followed him into sleep’s embrace.

 

* * *

[1] A Nepalese knife with a curved blade.

 


	2. a flicker of foxfire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief interlude.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EEEEE, thank you so much to all the people who have commented! :D I read them all, and they all make my day, every time, even when I don’t have the energy to comment back <3 I’m ridiculously delighted that so many of you are enjoying this, and I can’t wait to show you guys more!
> 
> This, however, is not more Steter - just a quick moment of cuteness that the muse insisted was necessary to the story. Fear not; the next chapter will be the morning after ;)

_A few hours earlier_

 

Derek hauled the door open and stepped inside and out of her way, flicking on the lights. “This is it,” he said. “It’s not much…”

He wasn’t underselling it. Kira looked over the bare, blocky expanse of concrete that was Derek’s apartment, and clutched the Walmart bag—full of the necessities Derek had insisted on buying for her on the way home, toiletries and a few changes of clothes—a little more tightly. Apart from the wall of windows, the place made her think of a prison cell; the few bits of Ikea furniture scattered here and there like the afterthoughts they clearly were didn’t really help.

“We can always call Scott,” Derek said hesitantly, and Kira realised her reaction must be like a flashing neon billboard to someone with a werewolf’s senses. “I’m sure he—Mrs McCall—Chris—Lydia—I’m sure someone else has a spare room. We can call somebody else.”

Kira shook her head firmly. “This is fine,” she said, and saw him relax because it wasn’t a lie. It _wasn’t_. Nothing else was fine—well, no, actually a lot of tonight was fine; Stiles being saved and Allison being safe were both _great_ things, but what her mom had done—what her dad had allowed her mom to do— _that_ wasn’t fine, at all. And she would take this chilly cement cell over having to go back to her parents, no question. Or bothering anyone else tonight, when everyone was taking care of Stiles or Allison or themselves, after the last few days they’d all had. “Where should I sleep?”

“I’ll show you.” Derek led her up the tight spiral staircase in the corner, and where the first floor was open plan the upstairs was divided up into a number of smaller rooms. Derek pushed one of the doors open, revealing a plain but perfectly normal-looking bedroom that was nonetheless a bit of a surprise after the spartan style of the downstairs. “You can stay here for—for as long as you stay here,” Derek said lamely, and Kira abruptly remembered Peter’s promise to her mother.

_I will kill you._

Lydia and Allison had said that Peter was a murderer who had unrepentantly killed half a dozen people; Kira hadn’t remembered that until she was in Derek’s car. The fact that he’d only killed the people who had murdered his family made it more likely, not less, that he’d meant every word he’d said to Kira’s mom—because Stiles was like Peter’s family, wasn’t he? They were part of the same pack, right? Scott’s pack. The way Peter had rushed to Stiles’ side, the way he’d touched him, held him—it was obvious that he cared about Stiles.

Which meant he probably hadn’t been making idle threats.

Which meant her parents—or at least her mom, but where her mom went, her dad followed—were going to have to leave Beacon Hills.

For the first time it occurred to Kira to wonder if she’d be going with them. Derek was offering her sanctuary, but would it extend past tonight?

Did she _want_ it to?

“Thanks,” she managed, trying to put all of her very genuine gratitude into the word. “It looks great.” She walked inside—the floor was carpeted, not bare concrete like it was everywhere else—and set her sword and bag on the bed.

“I’m going to order pizza,” Derek said, apropos of nothing. She noticed that he very carefully didn’t enter the doorway, not even touching the doorframe, and she was really, _really_ tired, but it made her think of wolves and territory, made her wonder if werewolves had rules about claimed space. And what it meant, if Derek viewed this room as her territory after just a few seconds. That he thought she would stay? “What do you want?”

 _What do you want,_ not, _do you want any_. Not giving her a choice about getting fed, or a chance to protest that she didn’t want him spending money on her. She’d tried that at Walmart, until she saw how her attempts at polite refusals were making his eyebrows grimmer and grimmer; until she understood that this must be a wolf thing. A pack thing. That she might very well be insulting him by refusing his attempt to take care of her.

She was Scott’s girlfriend, so she was Derek’s pack? Probably? And pack took care of each other. Scott hadn’t really talked about it a lot, but Kira paid attention and she thought she’d inferred the basics. The pull of pack was strong enough that Derek hadn’t broken away from the uncle who’d murdered his sister; it was surely enough to sweep up a kitsune Derek’s Alpha was dating.

If she was the Alpha’s girlfriend, did that make her like the alpha female of a wolf pack? Oh, god, she hoped not. She was barely passing calculus, she wasn’t ready to be a, a _den-mother_.

Would that make her, like, Derek’s _mom?_ But no, he was trying to look after _her,_ not acting like she was supposed to be taking care of _him_ …

She realised she’d left Derek hanging, and guilt nipped her even though he looked perfectly patient on the other side of the doorway. “Pepperoni,” she blurted. “Lots and _lots_ of pepperoni. Please,” she added belatedly.

For what might have been the first time that night—actually, maybe the first time _ever_ —she saw Derek smile. “I’ll call you when it gets here,” he said, and padded quietly away.

Kira sank down onto the bed and put her head in her hands, only suppressing a groan because Derek would probably hear her with his freaky werewolf ears.

She had a katana, and a Walmart bag; thank god her phone had been in her jacket pocket, because otherwise she wouldn’t even have that. Her mom was an attempted murderer, and her dad was an accessory at best, and downstairs, a werewolf was ordering her pizza, because she might be his pack-mom or even his pack- _queen_.

But Allison was alive, and so was Stiles, and the nogitsune was gone for good.

That was worth a whole lot of weirdness.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she reached for it without thinking, with a teenager’s reflex. And felt her lips curve into a stupidly big smile when she saw the Whatsapp message from Scott, sent just as she needed it as if he was a psychic as well as a werewolf.

_Hope ur ok. U were amazing 2nite. Love you. <3_

_I’m good,_ she typed. _& u weren’t so bad urself. Love you too xxx_

She saw the little ticks beside her message turn blue, marking it as read, and smiled again to think of Scott in his room across town, holding his phone and thinking about her.

She tucked her phone away, and started unpacking the Walmart purchases into the room’s chest of drawers, feeling both lighter and more solid as she propped her sword next to the bed.

She had no idea what was going to happen next, but they’d figure it out. After everything they’d faced in the last few weeks, after having her entire world turned upside-down and inside-out, she could still believe in that.

*

Kira passed out on Derek’s shoulder somewhere around her eighth slice of double-pepperoni—he’d ordered _six pizzas,_ but at least he’d ‘only’ expected her to eat _two_ of them—and it was still dark outside when she stirred.

Derek glanced down at her, his face illuminated by the glow from his phone screen. “Does your neck hurt?”

Kira straightened abruptly, her cheeks burning—and winced, rubbing the back of her neck as it twinged. “Yeah, actually.” She smiled sheepishly. “Karma. That’s what I get for using a defenceless werewolf as a body pillow.”

Derek snorted, the corner of his mouth curling for just a moment as he turned to her. “Here.”

He placed his fingertips on the side of her neck, as carefully as if she were made of glass, so softly she forgot to startle. He smelled like leather and musky sweat and amber, and a little like the meat-lover’s pizza he’d had earlier, and instead of glass she felt like fulgurite where he touched her, the jewel formed where lightning struck the earth: glittering and unearthly and full of hidden fire.

And then she blinked, and breathed in sharply as the pain in her neck bled away like dirty water swirling down a drain. “You’re painkillers _too?”_ she blurted without thinking. “You’re super-strong and you can hear everything and you’re all ripped like supermodels and you can, you know, _turn into wolves,_ and you’re _also_ magic painkillers?” She threw her hands up. “I am never dating anyone but werewolves ever again. My standards have officially been raised too high.”

Derek laughed, drawing back from her. “I’m sure Scott will be glad to hear it.” He glanced down at his phone.

Kira followed his eyes. “Is everything okay?” she asked hesitantly, painfully aware that she was in fox-printed pyjamas and Derek must have sat quiet and still for hours rather than wake her when she fell asleep on him.

Like, literally _on him_. She was the worst pack-mom-queen-thing _ever_.

“Yeah.” Derek didn’t look up though; he typed something out quickly. “There was a bit of a scare for a few minutes—Stiles disappeared, and obviously his father was worried. But Stiles is with Peter.”

Kira remembered how Peter’s claws had clasped Stiles’ bloodied face so carefully, how the older werewolf had held Stiles against his chest. “So he’s fine then,” she concluded.

Derek’s mouth quirked again. “Scott isn’t quite as convinced, but yeah, I think so.” He closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face. “It’s just—Stiles is at Peter’s apartment.”

Kira waited, but when nothing more was forthcoming she poked Derek’s shoulder gently. “Is that bad?”

“No,” Derek said slowly. “It’s just—Peter doesn’t let _anyone_ into his private space. He doesn’t let anyone _near_ it. I don’t even know where his apartment _is,_ and he’s my uncle. I have no idea how Stiles found it. Or why Peter let him in.”

“Well, Stiles is still kind of ill, right?” Kira wasn’t sure what else to call it; everyone had said Stiles wasn’t actually sick, and he definitely wasn’t possessed anymore, but he was worn out and needed a lot of rest. “Maybe Peter thought it was better to let Stiles have the couch than let him drive home and maybe have an accident or something.”

Derek snorted again. “You don’t know Peter. He doesn’t care about people like that. Not anymore.” But he looked a little thoughtful.

Kira shrugged, and got ungracefully to her feet. “Guess you’ll just have to ask him, then. I’m going to brush my teeth and go to bed for real.” She ducked her head. “Thanks for letting me sleep on you. And the pizza. And letting me stay here. And—”

“You’re welcome,” Derek cut her off. But he was smiling, so she must have got something right. “Don’t worry about school tomorrow. The whole pack’s taking the day off, so sleep in as long as you want.”

“Oh thank _god,”_ she said fervently, and Derek’s laughter followed her up the stairs, warm as an electric blanket wrapped around her.


	3. the day dawns, the morning star rises

Stiles drifted towards consciousness unhurriedly, languorously, awash in hedonistic comfort he was in no rush to leave. He felt _rested_ in a way he wasn’t sure he’d ever known before; the deep, cold, bone-bruise ache he’d been carrying around since the ritual with the Nemeton was gone as if it had never been; the edges of his self that had frayed and broken jagged under the nogitsune’s attentions had been smoothed whole. He’d been tired for so long he’d forgotten what it felt like _not_ to be, but just then he could have sprung up and jumped right into a lacrosse game if he’d wanted.

Which he absolutely _didn’t_ want; he had minus zero desire to move at all. Whatever he was lying on—he knew damn well it wasn’t _his_ bed—cradled his entire body so perfectly it was almost obscene. The thread-count of the sheets stroking against his skin must be in the stratosphere, and he was so _warm_ —beautifully, perfectly warm, snuggled against another body that emanated just the right amount of heat to unspool every knot in Stiles’ every muscle, to melt him like chocolate. If he was a cat, he would have purred.

There was an arm around his waist, bare legs entwined with his, someone else’s naked skin pressed all down his back. It should have shocked him awake, but it didn’t. The soft, easy intimacy of it felt too right, the sense of being enfolded and protected—of being _treasured_ —too good to be wrong.

He drifted in starlit blue bliss, his head and heart and every vein awash in the velvet-soft glow of it, the serene-sweet pleasure-peace.

Without opening his eyes even once, he nuzzled back into sleep. There was nothing, whispered the blue, in the waking world worth leaving this haven for; not now, not yet. And his dreams sang siren-songs, coaxing him back.

He went willingly, and dreamed of petrichor and leaf-litter under his bare feet, dreamed of running like flying through a forest like a kingdom, a circlet of thorns and diamonds on his brow; and of an enormous cobalt-eyed wolf, white as new snow with claws that flashed silver in the moonlight, running beside him all the way.

*

Peter woke mid-morning, several hours later than was his habit, and uncharacteristically allowed himself to drowse a while, savouring the warmth of Stiles tucked against him. The scents of sleep and sex and Stiles made for a delicious combination, especially imbued as they were with the scent of _Peter,_ the scents of his body and his space on Stiles’ skin like a particularly intoxicating perfume.

Peter brushed his nose against Stiles’ hair, breathing it all in, and was distantly surprised by how much he enjoyed the novelty of not waking up alone.

It was true, what he’d told Stiles the night before: Peter hadn’t shared his living space since the fire, not even for a night. He had woken from his coma alone, though medical personnel had arrived soon enough to exclaim and marvel; he had denned alone while hunting his pack’s murderers, and even the weakness that had accompanied his resurrection had not been enough to convince him to spend even one night crashed on Derek’s couch—if anything, quite the opposite. He didn’t truly believe Derek was capable of attempting avunculicide a second time, but the fire had pyrographed caution and wariness into Peter’s very bones, and he could no more trust in the bonds of blood than he could fly.

And if one couldn’t trust one’s own blood, what could ever be enough to risk the vulnerability of letting a _stranger_ into one’s home?

But Stiles had always been a little bit _different,_ hadn’t he? A little too eager to throw himself into looking for a dead body; a little too excited by the dark and the danger; a little too unfazed by the discovery of the monsters in the shadows. He’d all but hurled himself between Peter’s teeth, the night all of this had begun.

Not quite a stranger, even when Peter had known only his scent and not his name. Stiles had been too immediately familiar for that, the way he’d easily and fearlessly moved through the trees in the dark, the secret stillness that waited in the pauses between his bouts of puppy-klutziness, the way his smiles and laughter and quick humour served as camouflage for and a distraction from a particular glint in his eyes, one Peter knew so well after a lifetime of seeing it stare back at him from the mirror—all of it triggering a sense of instant recognition in a new-made Alpha. Recognising him not as a stranger but as beautifully, similarly strange; recognising him as not kin, but kind.

As _pack,_ in a way that had nothing to do with Bites and blood and everything to do with how well they matched beneath the skin.

Peter trailed his fingertip along Stiles’ jaw, thinking about that night. Remembering the disorientation, the flood of unfamiliar powers, the strength and strangeness of his new Alpha form and the explosion of his impossibly heightened senses, so much sharper than a Beta’s. The stink and noise of the search party and their dogs, hunting for his niece’s corpse; the blinding flashes of their torches, dazzling his eyes and confusing him. The hammer of the rain, smearing and confusing the scent-trail he’d been trying to follow.

One of the only real regrets he’d ever allowed himself was biting the wrong boy that night in the woods.

Peter ran his fingertip softly up and then down Stiles’ cheek, absent-mindedly tracing the tracks of the blood-tears Noshiko’s poison had left streaking that fair skin; gone now, but still so stark in Peter’s memory. He could still see them emblazoned on Stiles’ face as clearly as a tattoo.

And he remembered, just as viscerally, how Stiles had laughed into his snarling mouth, the black-velvet delight of that sound. Remembered the sharp, gunpowder-shock of Stiles’ nails piercing the back of his neck, like a mate’s bite, like an Alpha sliding into his soul; remembered the sensation of his own blood trickling down over his throat like a choker, like a collar. Remembered the glazed, feral heat in Stiles’ eyes as he’d licked his blood from Peter’s lips, his hands cupping Peter’s face.

He wondered how Stiles was going to react to those same memories when he woke up.

And then carefully set the thought aside, because he was too much the Machiavelli not to consider every possibility, and some of them burned like molten silver spilling down his throat, filled his mouth with the taste of ashes.

Besides, there were far, far more important and urgent matters to be concerned with than whether Stiles would disavow and reject the part of himself he’d finally let loose last night. Even if that included rejecting the one who’d called it beautiful.

Unreached for, the memory came to him of how Stiles’ heartbeat had stuttered, giving the lie away, as he’d whispered _I don’t want to hurt you_. The tenderness of his hands cradling Peter’s face, even as Peter’s blood dried beneath his nails. The terrible shudder-sweetness of the truth he hadn’t been able to hide, and that Peter hadn’t been able to resist.

Remembering that, Peter smiled, the fears he’d barely begun to verbalise to himself put to rest as swiftly as they’d risen, and the curve of his mouth was dark and sharp as he pressed a soft kiss to the back of the youth’s neck. “I’m not saying goodbye this time, Stiles,” he murmured, renewing his own vow. No matter what Stiles did, or tried, this time Peter wouldn’t be the one to walk away.

He’d not been in his right mind, the night he’d killed Kate and been killed himself. The night he’d let Stiles lie, and left him to those lies. But now that Peter knew exactly how priceless was the prize in his arms—priceless for reasons that made his kirin-heralded birth pale in comparison, that made Peter’s interest far more intimate and personal than that any legate might feel for any Astra—he had no intention of letting Stiles go.

Well, not in the long-term. The short-term would no doubt require delicate handling, in more ways than one. And in the _extremely_ short-term, Peter had needs even more urgent, if far more banal, than keeping Stiles close.

He left the bed slowly, careful not to wake the sleeping teenager, and made his way to the bathroom. But washing his hands after his ablutions, all thoughts of returning to the young man in his bed were seared from his mind the moment he caught sight of himself in the mirror.

After a long, heavy moment, he touched his fingers to the marks of Stiles’ teeth on his throat. Probed at the dull, pleasant ache at the back of his neck and felt the marks of Stiles’ nails sting beneath his touch. Scrutinised the rest of his body for all the other scratches and bruises that should have long since healed, and had done anything but in the hours since he’d received them.

And whispered, very quietly, _“Fuck.”_

*

When Stiles woke for real, he was alone in the bed.

And alone in his head.

_(Alone in his head._

_Alone in his_ head _._

_ALONE IN HIS—)_

For a second all he could feel was the echoing emptiness inside and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t think: there was just the howling screaming void where Void should have been, a gaping black-hole wound, empty empty empty bleeding out no god no where _was_ it, come back _(alone)_ it hurts _(I need you)_ don’t leave _(you promised you’d never leave me—)_

 _(Oh, but_ you’re _the one who left, Stiles, YOU’RE THE ONE WHO TORE US APART—)_

Stiles convulsed in on himself, locking up tight in a gasping knot of shock-disorientation-pain; knees to his chest, arms over his head, quick and jerking and desperate, something between a sob and a whimper catching in his throat like a shard of glass—

And melting into a hiss as a dozen, a hundred small aches and pains twinged and protested as he moved; etching out the boundaries of his body with sparks and bruises. All the small hurts made a shape around him, drew a line around his Self like a map of who and where he was. Instead of flying apart or dissolving into the nothingness, the emptiness, there were the stinging lines Peter’s claws had left on his legs, the bittersweet ache Peter’s teeth had left on his throat, Peter’s fingerprints bruised into his hips, his thighs; all of them anchors, boundary stones, proof that Stiles was real.

The pain turned inside him like a key in a lock, and Stiles remembered how to breathe. How to _be_.

_(Himself. Alone. One soul inside one skin._

His _soul._ His _skin.)_

Gradually, breath by breath, the panic attack faded away, folding itself small and smaller until it vanished entirely. Until he could remember—remember _reality;_ remember that the nogitsune had used him, not loved him; had been killing him—had tried to kill his friends. Had almost killed Isaac and Allison. It had never been _his_ shadow, only _a_ shadow—and it had only called him perfect because it found the secret darkness he’d spent his whole life keeping buried _useful,_ not beautiful.

Unlike Peter.

_‘Brilliant, beautiful, lethal—’_

Stiles held himself very still and thought about that, about shadows and blue fire and mirrors, about lies like honey and truth like absinthe and the razor-thin line between them, about surrender and choice and different kinds of power. About foxfire in his veins and Peter’s breath filling his lungs, about catching Allison’s taser in his bare hands and cradling Peter’s face between those same palms, licking his own blood from the werewolf’s mouth. About twisting the sword in Scott’s stomach and the singing-sting of Peter’s claws raking his outer thighs and the triumphant euphoria that had accompanied both.

He thought about the moment he’d surrendered to Void, tears on his cheeks and his wrists burning from the restraints on the chair, from fighting to get free and save the girl Oliver had dragged down into the basement as bait, insurance, incentive—Stiles still didn’t know her name, had never found it out, had only known it was his fault Oliver had been holding a drill to her head, that it was her or Stiles and that made it no choice at all. He remembered the nogitsune waiting pressed against the edges of his mind heavy and toxic as mustard gas— and remembered the agonising relief of finally giving in, giving up, taking a breath and feeling it slither inside, filling him up like volcanic ash, soft and suffocating and terrifyingly tender, smearing the lines between them like charcoal until Stiles couldn’t tell what was him and what was the Void. Couldn’t tell which of them was the monster.

He thought about the peace he’d found inside Chaos, in yielding to it, to the worst of himself, and ached it for it like an addict for their fix.

He thought about the moment he’d opened his eyes and seen Peter bent over him in Kira’s living room, about the blood in his mouth and on his face and Noshiko’s power-poison a fading cinnamon burn in the back of his throat. About the careful whisper of Peter’s claws against his cheeks—before the werewolf sheathed them, leaving only his silk-smooth fingertips touching Stiles like he was something holy. About the steadiness of Peter’s pulse as he’d cradled Stiles against his chest, of his voice as he’d promised to kill Noshiko, even knowing what Stiles was. About Peter’s door opening to him in the darkest hour of the night; about the hard heat of Peter’s arousal pressing into Stiles’ stomach, _even knowing what Stiles was._

No. Not ‘even’. ‘Because’ _. Because_ of what Stiles was.

_‘Terribly beautiful, beautifully terrible.’_

He thought about the moment he’d opened to Peter, taking him in and swallowing him down, and how eager Peter had been to fall into him. He thought about the silver bliss and the lines of black pain scrolling up Peter’s hand, about laughter that had held no mockery and triumph that no one had suffered for; about the fearlessness and awe and hunger with which Peter had met and matched him. About how sweet the taste of blood could be when it was spilled from willing lips and tongue by fangs tearing into you as if you were Kore’s pomegranate and they never, ever wanted to leave your Underworld.

He thought about Peter saying, _‘It was supposed to be you.’_

After a while, Stiles cautiously pushed himself upright. He’d been able to hear more with Void inside him—when he was inside Void—both and neither and _more_ —but his lame human senses couldn’t hear anything or anyone inside the apartment, no hint as to where Peter might have been or was up to. And really, if he pulled his creepy teleporting trick and materialised while Stiles was up and naked—it wasn’t like he’d be seeing anything new. Not after last night.

After repeating that to himself a few times, Stiles got up out of the bed.

Peter didn’t appear. Stiles’ body informed him of a dozen aches and near-pains, but didn’t protest very loudly about moving; Stiles could walk, could have run if he’d wanted to. Peter hadn’t left him limping, which was great, since Stiles was going to be having enough fun explaining _what the fuck_ to—or rather, hiding _who’d_ fucked _him_ from—Scott and the others as it was.

(There was a quiet dark sleek part of him animalistically glad the nogitsune was gone, so the spirit couldn’t heal all the bruises and scratches away, so Stiles could _keep_ them. Stiles considered being freaked out, then discarded the idea and just enjoyed it.)

One shimmering length of dark silk at the end of the bed turned out not to be part of the sheets, but a dressing gown; Stiles stole it shamelessly, and absent-mindedly fastened the tie around his waist as he took in his surroundings. With the mid-afternoon light streaming through the windows, Peter’s bedroom was almost intimidatingly beautiful; like the glimpses Stiles had caught of the rest of the apartment last night, it was a blend of sleek modern elegance and incredible hedonism. The bed he’d spent the night in was a nest of dark furs—not real ones, surely? Although given whose room it was, Stiles shouldn’t be surprised if they were the furs of _other werewolves_ Peter had murdered over the years—and silks, slightly raised off the floor on a low circular platform in the middle of the room, and looked just as sinful as sleeping in it had felt. Instead of normal lamps the ceiling was studded with soft lights that lit up as Stiles came near them, going dark again as he passed out of their range, and some kind of heating system warmed the carpeted floor under his feet. Small, beautiful objects rested in apparently-randomly placed recessed niches in the walls; a square crystal vial etched and stoppered with gold filled with some clear liquid; a conch shell carved of wood with a curled-up, sleeping figure nestled into the shell’s opening; a glove of silky metal mesh with dagger-like claws; a coiled rope of black pearls and opals; a deceased luna moth nested on a bed of cotton in a glass case; an orrery of gold and probably-not-silver and gemmed planets; a bonsai-esque miniature tree, judging from the sphere of earth it was rooted in apparently a living plant and not a figurine, spinning slowly in place as it levitated above a porcelain base marked with kanji. The niches were spaced far enough apart to make the collection an elegant display and not a dragon-hoard clutter, but the back wall behind the bed held no little treasures at all. Instead, where it wouldn’t be visible to someone lying in the bed, was an enormous floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall mural of a pack of wolves that had clearly been done by a master artist; Stiles could almost smell the musk of fur and the clear bite of the pine trees.

There were a _lot_ of wolves in the picture, though, Stiles realised belatedly; he knew from his research that a natural, non-were pack averaged out at about six members, rarely stretching to as many as fifteen, but there were over thirty wolves in the painting. There were humans, too, painted among the trees; a little girl playing in the snow, some teenagers laughing as they wrestled with a few of the smaller wolves, a couple of adults—including a smiling dark-haired man standing proudly beside a black, amber-eyed wolf off to one side, his hand resting on the wolf’s back. The presence of humans pretty much guaranteed that the wolves weren’t normal wolves, but a closer look confirmed it; Stiles had taken enough pictures of Scott’s wolf-form and studied all the ways in which it differed from any natural wolf species to recognise a pack of werewolves when he saw one.

It made his stomach twist, and not pleasantly, when the obvious conclusion presented itself: this was probably a painting of Peter’s old pack. The Hale pack, before the fire that had killed nearly all of them.

Fuck. If Stiles had lost this many people, he would have ripped the killers to pieces too. Hell, he’d kill anybody who laid one finger on his dad; he couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to lose so many of your family at once. Maybe Derek had a really good reason for being a sourwolf.

Maybe Peter had a really good reason for being…what he was, too.

Stiles let his gaze skim over the painting, thinking over what he knew about pack-bonds and wondering just what it had been like to feel so many of those semi-psychic connections break at once; for Laura, for Derek, for Cora, for Peter. But that was depressing as all hell, and he was just turning away to resume his hunt for a shower when one of the wolves caught his eye.

The painted pack were a whole range of normal wolf colours; a dozen shades of grey, a few browns, a handful of blacks. But just where the treeline dissolved into a sweep of tundra, where the snow and the shadows of trees had almost hidden it, was a single white wolf.

Stiles went cold. Without consciously thinking about it, he found himself stepping closer to the painting, not sure what he was looking for until he saw the glint of silver gilt on the wolf’s claws.

Most people probably couldn’t definitively tell one wolf from another except by colour. Anyone who wasn’t a biologist probably wouldn’t be able to see much difference between a werewolf’s wolf-form and a natural wolf, especially not in passing. But Stiles had spent too long hanging around werewolves and researching the hell out of them to be one of those people.

The wolf in the painting had golden eyes, not blue ones. But in every other way, it was the wolf from his dream.

*

 _Pull it together, Stilinksi,_ he told himself, minutes later under the high-pressure spray of Peter’s ensuite shower. He closed his eyes and braced himself against a marble-tiled wall, letting the hot water pound away the cold clenched tight around his bones, his throat. _It’s no big deal._ _It’s nothing. You got a glimpse of the painting at some point last night while Peter was fucking your brains out, and it made it into your dream. That’s it. That’s all it is._

_If you’re going to freak out, freak out about whose bed you spent the night in, not what you dreamed about while you were in there!_

The nogitsune was gone; gone for good, gone forever, not just from Stiles’ head but utterly destroyed—

_(If it hit him hard, again, the tidal wave of sick fucked-up grief and loss; if the loneliness of being the only one in his body struck him breathless; if it felt like someone he loved had died, a best friend, his soulmate, well—the fall of the water ought to hide the sound of his sobs even from werewolf ears, and his tears were invisible amidst the spray falling on his face, and no one else ever had to know.)_

—so there was nothing out there working to twist and shape his dreams, nothing to give weight or meaning to the random images produced by his unconscious. No reason to fear that something supernatural was going on.

Unless the door in his mind was still open. Unless something else, not the nogitsune but some other creature, had come knocking, was circling. Looking to get in.

Or maybe Stiles was just an open receiver picking up signals, and something of Peter had slipped through Stiles’ open door while they both slept. Because Stiles would bet any amount of money that the white wolf had been, was, Peter in his other shape.

Stiles made himself breathe out slowly. He’d call Deaton. Today. If Stiles’ ‘door’ was still open, then probably Allison and Scott’s were too, and they all needed closing. There must be some ritual they could perform, some meditation to practice, something Deaton would have shown or guided them through long before this if Void hadn’t slipped through Stiles’ door and made itself at home as quickly as it had.

If everything hadn’t gone to hell so fucking fast.

It wasn’t until he was towelling himself dry—being careful of the bruises—that Stiles remembered that everything he’d been wearing last night was in literal shreds. He grinned through the gut-clenching shiver of sense-memory, and once back in the bedroom, helped himself to the clothes from Peter’s walk-in wardrobe. There was something giddying about running his hands over Peter’s endless supply of v-necks, something simultaneously electrifying and hedonistic in pulling on one of his shirts, something intoxicatingly, daringly sexy about sliding into a pair of Peter’s boxer briefs, the fabric dragging a little on the marks of Peter’s claws as Stiles pulled them on. (The name discreetly printed onto the waistband was one he’d never heard of and had no idea how to pronounce, but _God,_ they felt good. No wonder Peter looked so smug all the time, if he was always snug in a pair of these.) Nothing fit like his own clothes, but it all fit well enough; he and Peter were about the same height now, even if Stiles was still skinny and lanky where Peter was sleek and lean.

Didn’t matter. Stiles looked at himself in the mirror inside the closet, at Peter’s clothes on his body and Peter’s marks on his skin, and felt a tight, twisting heat screw through the pit of his stomach, raise the hairs on the back of his neck with a champagne-sweet shiver.

His reflection smirked back at him from the glass, his pupils wide and dark and wild above a mouth gone suddenly red and raw. He looked like a savage thing, feral and fey, wearing the marks of Peter’s lips and teeth like jewels around his throat.

 _Ashmedai,_ Peter had called him last night. King of Hell, prince of lust. The young man in the mirror could have borne that name as easily as a crown.

_A crown of thorns and diamonds, with a white wolf at his side…_

Stiles blinked, and saw— _was_ —himself again, just a freshly-showered teenager in someone else’s clothes. A wholly unremarkable human who’d somehow found his way into a werewolf’s den.

It occurred to him, for the first time, that Peter had left him here, in Peter’s most private space, knowing that Stiles would look at everything, stick his nose into everything: the treasures in their niches on the walls, the painting of the Hale pack. It struck him like the memory of Peter baring his throat to him: Peter leaving him here alone was more intimate, somehow, than if he had stayed to be beside Stiles when he woke. A gesture of trust, or a challenge, to see what Stiles would do?

Or both, like the line of Peter’s neck curved naked in the dark?

Stiles pondered the question as he left the wardrobe. He paused for another long look at the mural—at the white wolf, part of the pack and yet apart from all the others—and then went looking for Peter.

He had no idea what he was going to say to the man, but it didn’t matter, because the werewolf didn’t seem to be home. Stiles eventually shrugged and shamelessly explored, wondering if it was really true that no one else had ever seen where and how Peter lived; secretly-savagely hoping that it was. He knew he should have been playing Sherlock Holmes, deducing Peter’s secrets from his furnishings and choice of reading material, hoarding information that would help the pack the next time Peter tried to pull one over on them. But instead he found himself hoarding the little details just for himself, curious and greedy and thrilled, cataloguing things he knew he’d never tell Scott: the arrangement of purple calla lilies—despite the name, each flower was a deep ebony black—in a graceful white vase; the French novel left on a coffee table with a leather bookmark tucked between its pages; a wooden spoon, its handle elaborately carved with hearts and chains and dragons, hanging on the wall in a kitchen that had pop-tarts in the cupboards and an enormous spice-rack above the oven. The paintings on the walls, some behind the climate-controlled glass he’d glimpsed last night, and the crystal piano he’d also seen from the corner of his eye before Peter pinned him to the wall; a bookcase of DVDs stocked with movies in half a dozen different languages, most of them releases that had hit the cinemas while Peter was still in his coma, stacked side-by-side with box-sets of shows that he must have followed before the fire, seasons he’d missed in the years Kate had stolen. There was a library that was almost two-thirds empty, shelves waiting hungrily for books to fill them, a coffee mug on a coaster beside a comfortable armchair in the perfect reading nook; a state-of-the-art laptop open to a screensaver of abstract art on the table in front of the sinfully plush couch in the living room. And there was a working fireplace, which surprised Stiles until he realised that Peter would never let fear rule him; he looked at the ashes in the grate and wondered how often Peter made himself light the flames, how often he made himself face the memories of being burnt alive. Was he close to overcoming those memories, or had he mastered them already?

Stiles should have cared because a fear of fire was something he could use against Peter if he had to. But he wasn’t thinking of tactics when the sight of the cold ashes caught like a fishhook in his throat.

Every door opened so smoothly at his touch that Stiles actually jolted when he finally came across one that didn’t. In momentary disbelief, he jiggled the door knob; but no, it was very definitely locked, as none of the others had been.

Which of course meant that Stiles immediately wanted nothing more than to find out what was behind it.

He was just thinking about what he might use to try and pick the lock—a skill he’d mastered when he was twelve, because what boy with a sheriff for a father didn’t want to learn how to get out of handcuffs?—when Peter’s voice made him jump almost a foot in the air.

“Haven’t you ever heard the story of Bluebeard?”

“So this is where you keep the bodies?” Stiles turned, knowing his heart was pounding and that Peter could hear it, but Peter gave no sign of noticing. He’d gone still, his attention clearly elsewhere, on the shirt and jeans and jacket Stiles had taken, and Stiles felt himself flush, his skin drawing tight and hot as Peter slowly looked him up and down. He lifted his chin, defiant-taunting, and thrilled right down to his core as Peter’s eyes flicked to the marks on his throat, drawn by the motion. He let Peter look, let him breathe in Stiles’ scent filtered through the smells of the clothes, the smell of _Peter_.

Saw Peter’s pupils dilate, blue sparks glittering in his irises just for an instant.

“Say the corpse of the past, rather,” the werewolf said finally. His voice was like the lightest brush of claws down the back of Stiles’ neck. “Now come on; I’m making breakfast. I’d really rather not have your father after me because you fainted from low blood sugar on your way home.”

“’S a little late to be worrying about my dad’s shotgun, isn’t it?” Stiles drawled, moving away from the door, towards Peter, towards those dark eyes tracking his every motion. “I don’t think breakfast’s gonna make up for you deflowering his only child, Peter.”

“Oh, is that what I did?” Peter purred. As Stiles almost passed him, he reached out and hooked a claw through one of the belt-loops of Stiles’ jeans— _Peter’s_ jeans—and dragged him in close to nose at his jaw, rubbing their cheeks together. Scenting him, and Stiles felt like both lightning and warm wax at once, reaching up on autopilot to grab Peter’s shirt as his knees went a little weak.

“You were never the innocent flower, Stiles,” Peter breathed. “You were always the serpent under ’t.”

Stiles swallowed hard, knowing that shouldn’t be a compliment, shouldn’t lodge behind his breastbone like a jewel of blue goldstone, dark and glittering. “Most people quote _Romeo and Juliet_ for this kind of thing,” he said hoarsely. “Not the Scottish Play.” He could feel his pulse pounding, just a few millimetres from Peter’s lips. Craving the touch of them.

“Neither of us are ‘most people’.” Peter’s breath ghosted hotly over skin that ached for his teeth—and pulled away, releasing Stiles so suddenly that Stiles swayed after him, momentarily lost in longing that licked the underside of his skin like flames. He saw Peter’s amusement, and wanted to bite the smirk off his lips. “Breakfast,” the werewolf reminded him piously.

“Bastard,” Stiles growled.

“Hm, no,” Peter said, leading the way towards the kitchen. “My father may have been human, but he was happily married to my mother. I’m afraid you’ll need to be a little more creative in your insults.”

Stiles nearly stumbled: there had been humans in the mural on Peter’s bedroom wall, sure, but he’d assumed that they were werewolves in human form. “Your dad was _human?”_ he blurted, surprise wiping all thoughts of sex and sexing from his mind.

Well, okay, maybe not _all_. But _most_.

“Mm.” Peter gestured to the kitchen table, and Stiles sat down. There were shopping bags on the counters that hadn’t been there when he’d been poking around earlier, which explained where Peter had been. “It’s a little uncommon, but hardly unheard of. Derek and Cora’s father took the Bite, but not everyone who marries into a werewolf pack does.” He unpacked groceries, putting things away with deft, economic grace. “Scott’s pack is more eclectic than most, I’ll admit, but virtually all werewolf packs have human members. Some marry in, and some are born in directly—Derek’s younger brother was born human, though I believe he was planning on asking for the Bite when he turned 18.”

Stiles looked at this man who’d been inside him last night, who’d caressed and kissed and tasted every inch of him, reached inside this bandage-born body that Void had never touched and made it real, and thought of the fireplace in the living room, wondered what it cost Peter to talk about his dead family like this, what it was costing him to keep his voice steady as he laid out eggs and flour, pulled a mixing bowl down from a cupboard. Or did it cost him nothing—could he truly be as blasé as he seemed? Somehow, Stiles couldn’t believe that the same man who had gone on a murderous rampage to avenge his family was, not even a full year out of his coma, already at peace and moved on from it all.

The one thing he _didn’t_ wonder was why Peter was telling him all this. After what had happened last night—not the sex, and not even Peter saving him from Noshiko, but what he and Peter had seen in each other in the dark, what they’d bared and given and taken, the wild and terrible euphoria of running through the same midnight forest in their souls and howling the same savage-sweet song, tearing at each other in a feral frenzy to get to the mirrors that lay beneath their skins and glorying in the infinity of reflections they cast between them—after that, it didn’t seem strange at all that Peter would open up to him about his lost pack. How could that compare to what they’d already shared? It was a small, easy thing in comparison.

Small, and easy—but still precious. Still the same trust, or gift, that Peter had offered by leaving Stiles in his apartment alone. Still something Stiles guessed Peter had granted to no one else.

Stiles was touched—revelled in it—didn’t want to abuse or damage this rare and wordless, delicate thing Peter was proffering. But the Argent Bestiary had never mentioned humans living with werewolves, and Stiles had _so many questions_.

“Derek had a brother?”

“He had two,” Peter corrected. He was mixing things together in the bowl, but Stiles barely noticed through the gut-punch of the revelation. “Talia and Patrick had five cubs: Laura, Derek and Michael—Derek’s twin—Cillian, who was born human, and Cora.”

 _Derek’s TWIN_. Stiles’ mind reeled a little, trying to imagine Derek being tied as close to someone as twins were supposed to be. A twin whom he’d lost, along with everyone else, the night of the fire.

Was that why Derek had swept Ethan and Aiden under his wing, the last week or so? For the sake of Michael’s memory?

“The painting in your room,” Stiles said quietly. “It’s of your family, isn’t it?”

“I knew you’d figure it out.” Peter didn’t look up from whatever he was whipping up, from the sizzle of butter dropped onto a hot pan and the brown powder he pulled down from the spice rack. “Yes. There were rather a lot of us, as you saw.”

“Is that because you turn into dire wolves?” Stiles asked. He found himself hungry for more of Peter’s past, wanting to know everything about the people in the painting, the people who had helped make Peter into who he was—but it was one thing for Peter to offer the information; it was another thing to pry for it. He couldn’t bring himself to dig at those wounds, rip at those scars. Peter had healed the physical marks of the fire like they were nothing, when he became an Alpha—but fireplace or no fireplace, Stiles didn’t think there weren’t other scars, deeper and worse, that no werewolf magic could smooth away, even if Peter let no one see them. Better, and honestly more useful, to turn the conversation away from the personal and towards the technical.

That question _did_ get Peter to look at him, shooting him a raised-eyebrow glance over his shoulder. “Figured that out too, did you?”

Stiles rolled his eyes. _“Please,_ I set up a webcam the first time Scott changed.” _Obviously_. How could he have done anything else? “Had to lock him in the basement, but it wasn’t like I was going to _not record it,_ even if I couldn’t be in the same room without getting my face chewed off.” That had been fun, running for the basement steps with a half-changed werewolf losing his mind at his heels. He’d barely gotten the door shut between them in time. “It’s not as if Scott would have been in danger if anyone had found the footage. Everyone would just think it was really awesome special effects.”

“Hunters would have known otherwise,” Peter pointed out.

“Okay, point, but I didn’t know about them then,” Stiles said. And it wasn’t like he’d been going to put the video on _Youtube_ or something, jeez. _“Anyway,_ I figured out pretty quickly that whatever he turned into, it wasn’t any of the gray wolf subspecies. I got better pictures later, when Scott had better control and could stand still and pose for me, but it was obvious from the start that he wasn’t turning into a normal wolf. He was way too big, with too much muscle, the shape of his skull was off, his jaw and teeth were too long...” He shrugged. “A little bit of Google, a couple of documentaries, and one weekend trip to Los Angeles to check out the Natural History Museum—which is _awesome,_ by the way—”

“I’ve been,” Peter murmured.

“—and I was pretty much certain. Your wolf-forms are dire wolves. Aren’t they?”

“That is indeed correct.” Peter poured batter into the pan, and Stiles’ stomach cramped at the hiss and sizzle of it, at the smell of cooking pancakes rapidly filling the kitchen. When had he last eaten? Hell, what _time_ was it?

“My dad knows where I am, right?” he asked belatedly. If his dad thought he’d disappeared again, that the nogitsune was back—

“He knows you’re with me,” Peter confirmed, and Stiles vaguely recalled overhearing Peter on the phone last night, right about the time Stiles was passing out. “And I let him know you’d slept late, and that I’d escort you home once you were fed. He’s not worried, Stiles.”

Stiles rubbed the back of his neck, his fingertips brushing the edge of one of the bites Peter had left on him. “He might be when he sees me,” he pointed out, caught between wryness and nerves.

Without turning around, Peter gestured to a bag Stiles hadn’t noticed, on another of the kitchen chairs. “We can take care of it before you head back,” he said blithely, and when Stiles peeked, he found both liquid and powder foundation in a number of shades.

“I don’t know how to use any of this,” he warned Peter.

“I do,” Peter said simply.

Stiles eyed the make-up dubiously. “I hope so,” he muttered. All the hamburgers in the state couldn’t be as bad for his dad’s heart as his son walking in covered in the love-bites of a middle-aged, sociopathic werewolf.

Peter laughed softly, for all the world as though he could hear Stiles’ thoughts.

“But yeah,” Stiles said, ignoring him to get back to the interesting stuff. “Dire wolves. They used to have huge packs, way bigger than gray wolf packs. Like, thirty-plus wolves. So are werewolf packs usually that big? Is it the wolf part or the human part that likes big families?”

“Do you know, I honestly couldn’t tell you?” Peter said. A growing stack of pancakes was appearing on the plate beside his elbow. “We do usually have large families, but at this point it may simply be cultural.” He paused, considering. “Although if it _is_ an instinctive compulsion, that would do something to excuse Derek’s idiocy in choosing to Turn a bunch of teenagers.”

Stiles laughed. He wouldn’t have if he’d been with the pack—if Scott had been there to turn his appalled _Stiles-how-could-you!_ face on him. Boyd and Erica were _dead,_ had died badly after short lives rough enough to make becoming monsters an irresistible offer in comparison, and Stiles’ dad wouldn’t want him to laugh about that.

But his dad wasn’t here, and neither was Scott, and Peter was the last person who was going to judge him for a lack of proper empathy and compassion. And it was as much of a relief not to have to pretend here as it had been with Void.

More so, maybe—because here he could laugh whenever he wanted to, and not just when the nogitsune let him have the wheel of his own body.

_(He would keep telling himself that, over and over, and eventually he would believe it was true. He would.)_

“Okay,” he said, curiosity overcoming comedy, “but seriously, serious question—”

“Yes, I have maple syrup,” Peter said smoothly.

“Ha ha,” Stiles said. As if that wasn’t the first thing he’d looked for on the table when he realised what Peter was making. “No, really. The big mystery about dire wolves? The real ones, I mean? Is that they just _vanished_. They were around for about a hundred thousand years, co-existing with gray wolves just fine. They made it through _three_ glaciation periods, no problem. But then _after_ the last ice age—when there was more food than there’d been before, when the climate got better— _bam.”_ He snapped his fingers. “No more dire wolves. They disappeared in a geological _second_. None of the paleontologists know why. It’s this huge mystery that people have built their entire careers around trying to solve.

“But _they_ don’t know about werewolves. So. What the fuck happened, Peter? ’Caus you can’t tell me it’s a coincidence that werewolves just _happen_ to take the shape of some megafauna that up and vanished all at once.”

“You know,” Peter said, as if to no one in particular, “most people would spend the morning after tip-toeing around the elephant in the room, trying to figure out where they stand with each other, what kind of relationship they have now that they’ve had blisteringly hot sex. Not demand answers to ten thousand year old paleontological mysteries.”

“Neither of us are most people,” Stiles said dryly, and Peter laughed.

“Touché.” He slid another pancake onto the plate. “But I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for you. No one has yet invented a way to tell human and werewolf skeletons apart, and unless we’re buried with a specific ritual, we always return to human form when we die.”

“The wolfsbane,” Stiles murmured, and Peter turned to look at him, his expression unreadable. “We—uh, we found Laura. Her body. Scott and me. Only she was a wolf, until I pulled up the wolfsbane around her grave.”

“So that was you,” Peter said softly. “Hm.” He turned back to the pan, deftly flipping a pancake over with a flick of his wrist. “In any case, you’re correct; the funeral ritual requires a spiral of wolfsbane buried around the body. But the use of that ritual only goes back a few hundred years, and it was never common practice. We’ve always lived alongside humans, and that necessitated human funerals. So which of the stone age skeletons are human, and which are werewolves? I can’t say. As far as I know, no one can. Which makes it impossible to say with any accuracy when our species appeared. We have oral histories, and legends, of course. But hard proof?” He shrugged. _“The Epic of Gilgamesh_ mentions wolf shapeshifters, and that was written in approximately 2100 BCE. As long as humans have been recording history, there have been werewolves. Before that, no one knows for certain.”

Stiles pondered that, until the _thud_ of Peter setting a plate in front of him jolted him out of his thoughts.

“Eat,” Peter said firmly. But there was no need: the pancakes smelled _amazing,_ and Stiles was famished; by the time Peter had finished rinsing out the mixing bowl Stiles was working on his fourth pancake, twirling the pieces through a sea of syrup before shoving them in his mouth. He barely took the time to chew.

“Okay, but what about the legends, though?” he asked, when the edge of his hunger had been sufficiently dulled by a padding of sweet fluffy flapjacks. “Gimme.”

Peter sat down opposite him, openly amused. “You eat like a wolf,” he said, with nothing but approval.

Stiles swallowed his current bite before replying. “Yeah, well, someone helped me work up an appetite last night. The _legends,_ Peter.”

Peter’s eyes grew hooded, and the plate before him remained empty. He rested his chin on steepled fingers. “They’re not especially complicated. Dire wolves evolved and lived on what is now this continent, but after the ice age you mentioned, there was a land bridge. The dire wolves disappeared about the same time that humans crossed it.” He tipped his head. “The stories differ: some say that humans were the greater predator, so great that the wolves took their form to become better hunters, and survive where other megafauna died out. Others say that humans were such great hunters, they were killing off the wolves’ food supply, and the wolves learned the human shape in order to survive, infiltrating the human tribes and passing themselves off as human to escape being hunted. Some versions have wolves taking human form so they could take vengeance for what humanity was doing to their home—and in so doing, became too human to ever be fully wolves again.”

“They’re all a little vague on the details,” Stiles said, in the brief pause between mouthfuls. “There’re fish and stuff that change sex, sure, but you’re talking about changing _species. At will._ How does anything evolve the ability to do that?”

Peter shrugged. “That’s the nature of folklore: it’s generally sparse on practical details. But personally, I don’t think there’s room for werewolves in Darwin’s theories. Whether we started out as wolves or humans—and we can’t be so different from you, since we can interbreed without difficulties—” Stiles snorted a laugh, and Peter smirked before continuing, “—I don’t think we _evolved_ the ability to change. Somewhere down the line, magic _made_ us what we are—whether that’s wolves who become humans, or humans who turn into wolves, or something of both and between.”

“I accept that magic exists,” Stiles said. “I’ve seen too much not to.” He remembered the burn of foxfire in his veins, black and burning, and fumbled his fork. It clattered against the edge of his plate, and he dropped his hand into his lap to hide that it was shaking. “But what kind of magic could do _that?”_

Peter was quiet for a long moment. When Stiles’ hand had steadied and he could look up again, he found Peter staring at him, his expression a mask, his eyes blue as stained glass.

“What?” Stiles brushed his hand over his mouth. “Do I have something on my face?”

Peter shook his head, slowly. “The world-changing kind, I imagine,” he said finally; it took Stiles a beat to realise Peter was answering his question. “Or perhaps the divine.”

Stiles raised one eyebrow. “The what now?”

“That’s the most popular version of the myth,” Peter said. “The one I was taught.” He wasn’t look at Stiles anymore—he was looking at something far away. _And long ago?_ “That when the Moon saw the threat humans were to the rest of the world, xe gave the greatest of xyr children—that would be the dire wolves—the power to take human form. So that they could stand as the guardians of the wild places…and the wild things.”

He said that last so softly that it caught in Stiles’ throat, made his ribs draw tight around his heart. _The wild things._

 _Like me?_ he asked without asking, molten silver and blood pooling in the pit of his stomach at the thought. Hot and dangerous, terrible and fragile, exultant and almost afraid. _Wild things—like me?_

Peter tilted his head, and the answer was in the angle of his jaw and the cobalt spark in his eyes, eerie and auroral and utterly inhuman: _Yes._

_Wild things like you._

Neither of them spoke a word aloud, but neither could they take them back. Peter didn’t look as though he wanted to.

Stiles held himself still. He wanted to ask about werewolf religion, about the moon and the genderqueer pronouns Peter had used to refer to it; a small part of him wanted to deflect the harp-string tension in the room with a quip about werewolves not being all that good at their jobs, if they were supposed to protect the environment and all Earth’s other creatures. But he couldn’t bring himself to cheapen the moment.

“What happened last night?” he asked. His boldness had deserted him; he couldn’t quite look Peter in the eyes. “What are we now? Was that a one-off, are we gonna pretend it never happened?”

“I certainly hope not,” Peter purred, and Stiles’ gaze jerked up and locked with his, shock and heat blooming like an orchid behind his eyes, below his breastbone.

Peter smirked at him. “I like you, Stiles,” he said, and it hit Stiles hard and sharp and searing as cocaine, the echo-memory of a car parking lot and adrenaline racing and Peter bringing his mouth to Stiles’ wrist with such sick sensuality that Stiles’ heart had pounded _please please please_. “I always have. You’re brilliant, and beautiful, and lethal, and I want you.” The blue fire in his eyes burned a little brighter. “I wanted you for my pack when I was an Alpha, and I want you now. However I can have you.”

Stiles stared at him, dry-mouthed. “You’re not in love with me.” It was not a question.

“I don’t know if I’m capable of loving anyone romantically,” Peter said simply. “Not since the fire. I don’t know if I ever will be.” His eyes glittered, sunlight—no, _moonlight_ on bright blue ice. “But I will never underestimate you, or ask you to be anything but what you are. I will understand you in a way Scott and the others never will, and I will never judge or shame you for it. I will guard your secrets and your tears, and I will see you learn anything you want to learn. I will hurt you when you need to be hurt, and never let anyone else lay a hand on you. I will give you my throat when you need to tear someone else apart, and I will kill at your word, and your whim.”

Stiles couldn’t stop staring. He wanted to ask _Why?_ , but he knew why. He wanted to ask _What would you get out of this?_ , but he knew the answer to that too.

He wanted to say _Yes_ so badly that it hurt—so badly that his lips shaped the word, soundlessly—and knew that he couldn’t.

That he _shouldn’t_.

And yet, somehow, without making a conscious decision, Stiles found himself pushing his plate away and rising from his chair. He moved around the edge of the table, and Peter only watched him, tracking him with those blue-topaz eyes, burning and intense even as he kept his body so still—until a flick of Stiles’ fingers had the werewolf straightening up and leaning back in his chair in response, just in time and at the perfect angle for Stiles to close his hand around Peter’s throat, just beneath his jaw.

Peter made a sound that fell into Stiles’ stomach like a burning comet into an ocean of oil; low and soft and surprised, exploding into heat. He shuddered in Stiles’ grip, unresisting as Stiles pushed his head back, and Stiles watched his pupils dilate, contract, dilate again, irises shimmering like apatite as Stiles considered him coolly.

For all that Stiles wanted to climb into Peter’s lap and tear him open, he thrilled at the fear he saw in Peter’s face, just a flicker of it at the back of his eyes. The fear that Stiles would say _No_.

Stiles stroked his thumb along Peter’s jaw thoughtfully. “You want me,” he said softly, “or you want to _belong_ to me?”

Peter shuddered again, without closing his eyes. Without looking away from Stiles. “Both,” he whispered.

Stiles pressed his thumb to the pulse-point where Peter’s jaw met his neck, just hard enough to feel how it raced for him. He felt the hunger to press harder—hard enough to make Peter groan, hard enough to leave bruises that would last longer than a few seconds, that would mark him up like Peter had marked _him_. Hard enough to see just how far Peter would let him go.

With effort, Stiles resisted the temptation. But not the temptation to bend down, close enough that he could taste Peter’s choked-back groan.

It was Stiles’ turn to smirk. “Don’t touch,” he breathed against Peter’s lips—and then kissed him, hard and deep, swallowing the sound of surprised pleasure-hunger that escaped Peter’s throat. He thrilled as Peter’s hands rose—and as the werewolf aborted the motion just as swiftly, curling his hands into fists on his thighs and straining up into Stiles’ mouth instead, something terribly, deliciously close to a whimper bursting sweet and silken on Stiles’ tongue. Peter’s body strained like a strung bow, but his mouth was soft and slack, letting Stiles do whatever he wanted, _take_ whatever he wanted, and kissing wasn’t supposed to be like this, _sex_ wasn’t supposed to be like this when you were seventeen—

But Stiles couldn’t imagine ever wanting anything vanilla ever again.

By the time the kiss ended they were both panting, and Stiles didn’t need to glance down into Peter’s lap to know he wasn’t the only one hard. It was tempting to drag Peter back to the bedroom—fuck, to drag him onto the kitchen table and have him right then and there—but there was something unspeakably delicious about this too; pulling back, pulling away, letting his hand slip from Peter’s throat and leaving them both aching, both burning.

“I need to think about this,” he managed. He could feel the throb of his pulse in his cock, but the torture of it was sick-sweet—and only increased when he remembered whose clothes he was wearing. By the starving look on Peter’s face, _he_ didn’t need any reminder. He could almost certainly smell the first drops of Stiles’ pre-come smearing into the soft cotton of his, Peter’s, underwear. The thought made Stiles’ cock twitch, and he forced himself to take a step back, away from the man he had a thousand and one reasons not to want.

None of which he could remember right now, care about right now.

“I need to get home. I need—time,” Stiles said.

Peter stared at him for a long moment, and from the look on his face Stiles seriously considered the possibility that the werewolf would snap and lunge for him, tear him out of Peter’s clothes and fuck him right there on the kitchen floor.

He wasn’t at all sure he’d try to stop Peter if he did.

But Peter only said, “That’s fair.” His eyes were still wild, but the werewolf-fire faded from them, leaving them only human-blue. “Have you eaten enough? Then let’s go clear up your neck.”

Peter more than got his revenge, Stiles decided, perched on the lip of a bath-tub while Peter used soft brushes to spread powder over his throat, every stroke an electric caress Stiles could feel all the way down to his toes. He was vaguely aware of Peter’s voice, smooth as milk chocolate, explaining how to cover up each bruise, every mark of a werewolf’s teeth and claws—but Stiles would just have to teach himself from Youtube tutorials, because he barely registered a word. Not with Peter kneeling between his feet, one hand on Stiles’ waist to steady him, and the maddening, torturous stroke of the brush over bites that stung with glittering sparks even under the lightest pressure.

But then it was done, and Peter pushed the bag of make-up into his hands, and they were leaving the apartment. Peter walked him down to the street without a word, but the silence between them was anything but empty or cool: it was full of thunder, hot enough to bleach bone.

“Can you drive?” Peter asked. He held out Stiles’ car keys before Stiles realised he’d left them in his shredded clothes somewhere.

“Thanks.” Stiles took the keys gingerly; static sparked between them, but he and Peter were both careful not to touch. “And yeah, I can drive. I’ll be fine.”

“You might well be,” Peter said, “but I’m still going to drive behind you to make sure you make it home safe and sound.” When Stiles opened his mouth to automatically protest, Peter only smiled. “I promised both your father and Lydia that I would do no less. And you may have been the one the nogitsune chose, but I’m rather more afraid of _them_ than I am of _you.”_

Truth, or only playfulness? Peter certainly hadn’t seemed to fear Stiles last night, or today—but Stiles couldn’t imagine him truly fearing Lydia or the Sheriff, either.

Still, “Probably smart of you,” Stiles admitted, and Peter grinned. “Guess I’ll see you in my rearview.”

“You certainly will.” But the light tone faded, and Peter sobered. “Take as long as you need, Stiles. I’m not going anywhere.”

He walked away before Stiles could answer—which was kind, because Stiles wasn’t sure what he might have said.

Climbing into his jeep, he tossed the bag of make-up on the passenger seat and turned the key in the ignition. But instead of her usual deep purr, his baby coughed weakly at him, and Stiles swore. Not now—he really did not want to be stranded at Peter’s apartment any longer.

Because he did, in fact, want it very badly. And he needed to think long and hard first.

“Come on, come on,” he muttered, turning the keys again and again, praying for the engine to turn over and start behaving. The heartburn of humiliation was creeping up his throat, defensive even though Peter had said nothing about his car, had never commented on its age or state. But he didn’t have to, pulling up behind Stiles in something sleek and burnished, a car that made Derek’s camaro look like something off the scrap heap—which meant Stiles didn’t want to even _think_ about how his jeep looked next to it.

He loved his jeep. He didn’t want a flashy expensive car. But the ache of unsatisfied arousal was twisting into something sharp and barbed inside him, a hunger that resented the need to be responsible, sensible, and he didn’t think the Peter who had let him hold his throat would make the same sneering comments he usually directed towards every member of Scott’s pack, but the thought that he might be even thinking them was unbearable, _enraging,_ and Stiles just wanted his damn car to _start!_

He slammed his hands against the wheel—and something flashed in his rearview mirror, a sparkling gleam like sunlight striking a diamond. But it was gone almost before he could register it, and the engine caught in the same instant, turning over loud and sweet as if to apologise for the previous failures.

Stiles grinned, relieved and kind of wanting to laugh. He checked his rearview for Peter, resisted the urge to wave, and reached for the gear-stick.

He did wonder, as he pulled out of his parking space, how he’d managed to get enough of the liquid foundation on his fingers to leave smudges of it on the steering wheel—especially since Peter had only used the powder one on Stiles. But he had to focus on the road, and not get distracted wondering how wide Peter’s backseat was and how soft the leather—because obviously Peter would have leather upholstery in his car—might be, and by the time he put the car in park in front of his house, where his dad was waiting inside, he’d completely forgotten to question how a bit of make-up had gotten smeared on the hand he’d had wrapped around Peter’s throat.

He was trying to think of what he could tell his dad without lying, trying to figure out how he felt about the fact that Peter waited until he had his house-key in the lock before driving away.

He never for one moment imagined that across town, Lydia might be holding a pillow over her head, trying to muffle the fading echoes of the Sound that had rung like a golden gong struck by Thor’s hammer not so long ago, loud enough that she needed no scream to Hear it, loud enough that she couldn’t _not_ Hear it.

But she, if she’d known, might not have been so surprised to discover that the burst of Sound that had rattled her bones and jolted her teeth and whirlpooled her blood—so exquisitely, terribly beautiful and beautifully, painfully terrible—coincided exactly with the moment Stiles’ palms had slammed against his steering wheel—and with the bright flash he’d glimpsed in his mirror.

She, after all, knew the word _astra_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I imagine this verse’s dire wolves are actually bigger than the real thing, but the rest of the dire wolf discussion is completely true to real life, to the best of my researching ability.
> 
> And yes! IN THIS VERSE ALL WEREWOLVES CAN TURN INTO WOLVES. Because it’s so _stupid_ that in canon they can’t. That’s the entire foundation of the werewolf myth! WTF, JEFF DAVIS? They’re not were _wolves_ if they can’t turn into wolves. They’re just - I don’t even know what you’d call shapeshifters who swap their eyebrows for big teeth. Except _ridiculous._
> 
> Also, yes, I did actually craft an entire family tree for the Hale pack, with 47 members spread out across 5 generations. _Hush._ None of you can possibly be surprised by my tendency to go overboard by now. Anyway, given that werewolves’ healing ability = drastically extended lifespan (and that _is_ from canon) most of those 47 were alive at the time of the Hale Fire.


End file.
